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Presented to the

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
LIBRARY

by the

ONTARIO LEGISLATIVE
LIBRARY

1980

GREATER BRITAIN:

A RECORD OF TRAVEL

ENGLISH-SPEAKING COUNTRIES

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

LONDON - BOMBAY - CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK - BOSTON • CHICAGO
ATLANTA - SAN FRANCISCO

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.

TORONTO

A RECORD OF TRAVEL

ENGLISH-SPEAKING COUNTRIES.

WITH ADDITIONAL CHAPTERS ON ENGLISH INFLUENCE

IN JAPAN AND CHINA, AND ON HONG KONG

AND THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS

SIR CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE, BART.

AUTHOR OF " THE FALL OF PRINCE FLORESTAN OF MONACO/'
AND EDITOR (IF " PAPERS OF A CRITIC1 "'

MA.CMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1907

411 rights rtser-ved.

FIRST EDITION PRINTED (2 VOLS., 8vo.) 1868; REPRINTED MARCH 1869;
NEW EDITION (i VOL., CROWN 8vo.) JUNE 1869;

REPRINTED OCTOBER 1869, 1870, 1872, 1880 ;

NEW EDITION 1885; REPRINTED 1888, 1890, 1894; 1905;

REISSUED 1907.,

.1 ' M'l

PREFACE TO THE NEW (8TH)
EDITION.

IN adding to this book two chapters which form the record of
one of my later journeys, I have not changed the earlier
portions of the work otherwise than by striking out some
statements which had obviously ceased to be true, and by
adding a few notes. My title has become hackneyed, and my
stories have become stale ; but I could hardly abandon the
former, and my publishers tell me of the latter that the public
like old friends.

C. W. D.

76, SLOANE STREET, CHELSEA.
1885.

PREFACE TO FIRST ORIGINAL
EDITION.

IN 1866 and 1867, I followed England round the world:
everywhere I was in English-speaking, or in English-governed
lands. If I remarked that climate, soil, manners of life, that
mixture with other peoples had modified the blood, I saw, too,
that in essentials the race was always one.

The idea which in all the length of my travels has been at
once my fellow and my guide — a key wherewith to unlock the
hidden things of strange new lands — is a conception, however
imperfect, of the grandeur of our race, already girdling the
earth, which it is destined, perhaps, eventually to overspread.

In America, the peoples of the world are being fused together,
but they are run into an English mould : Alfred's laws and
Chaucer's tongue are theirs whether they would or no. There
are men who say that Britain in her age will claim the glory of
having planted greater Englands across the seas. They fail to

nu PREFACE.

perceive that she has done more than found plantations of hei
own — that she has imposed her institutions upon the offshoots
of Germany, of Ireland, of Scandinavia, and of Spain. Through
America, England is speaking to the world.

Sketches of Saxondom may be of interest even upon humblei
grounds : the development of the England of Elizabeth is to be
found, not in the Britain of Victoria, but in half the habitable
globe. If two small islands are by courtesy styled " Great,"
America, Australia, India, must form a " Greater Britain."

C. W, D.

76. SLOANE STREET, CHELSEA,
1868.

CONTENTS.

PART I.

CMAP. PAIR

CHAP. FAGH

I. — VIRGINIA

XIV. — BRIG II AM YOUNG..

II. — THE NEGRO

XV. — MORMONDOM

lOd.

HI. — THE SOUTH

2T>

XVI. — WESTERN EDITORS

IO7

IV. — THE EMPIRE STATE..

XVII. — UTAH

TlS

V. — CAMBRIDGE COM-

XVIII. — NAMELESS ALPS....

125

MENCEMENT

XIX. — VIRGINIA CITY

i?S

VI. — CANADA

XX. — EL DORADO

VII — UNIVFRSITY OF MI-

XXI. — LYNCH LAW

ICQ

CHIGAN

XXII.— GOLDEN CITY

172

VIII.— THE PACIFIC RAIL-

XXIII. — LITTLE CHINA

I S3

ROAD

XXIV. — CALIFORNIA.

I Sn

IX. — OMPIIALISM

XXV. — MEXICO

104

X. — LETTER FROM DEN-
VER

7J.

XXVI.— REPUBLICAN OR
DEMOCRAT

IOQ

XI. — RED INDIA

8"?

XXVII. — BROTHERS

"OS

XII. — COLORADO

\XVIII. — AMERICA

216

xni. — ROCKY MOUNTAINS...

PART II.

I.— PITCAIRN ISLAND

227 ', V. — THE MAORIES

267

II. — HOKITIKA

211

VI. — THE TWO FLIES. .

27.1

III. — POLYNESIANS

24. C

VII. — THE PACIFIC

279

IV. — PARE WAN UI PAH

250

CONTENTS.

PART IIL

CHAP.
I SYDNEY ....

PAGE

285
291
297

323

PAR'

395
4°5

411
419
425
436
444
456
462
470
479
483
488
498

CHAP. 1

'Ac 6

339

342
345
356
359
368

379

3^5

5'5
523
529
535
542
553

55S
564

566
59i

II. — RIVAL COLONIES

IX. — VICTORIAN PORTS...
X. — TASMANIA

III. — VICTORIA .

IV.— SQUATTER ARISTO-
CRACY...

"** XI. — CONFEDERATION
\II. — ADELAIDE

* V.— COLONIAL DEMO-
CRACY .

XIII. — TRANSPORTATION ...
\IV. — AUSTRALI\

VI — PROTECTION

XV — COLONIFS

VII.— LMiOUR

r iv.

I — MARITIME CFYION...

11, — KANDY ... . .

XVI.— OVERLAND ROU 1 ES..
\VII. — BOMBAY

Ill — MADRAS TO C A I •

CUTTA ,

XVIII. — THE MOHURRUM
XIX — ENGLISH 1 EARNING

IV BENARES . , ,

V CASTEi > .. ....

XX — INDIA ..

VI. — MOHAMEDAN CITIES..
VII SIMLA . .... .

XXI. — DEPENDENCIES
XXII — THE SECOND EMPIRE

V\II - — COLONIZATION . . . .

IN THE EAST

IX — THE " GAZETTK "

XXIII THE ENG' ISH .

X — UMRITSUR. ...

XXIV — ENGLISH INFLUENCF

XI. — LAHORE

IN JAPAN ...

XII. — OUR INDIAN ARMY...
JCIII. — RUSSIA

XXV. — ENGLISH INFLUENCE
IN CHIN\ .<>

XIV — NATIVE STATES

INDEX 609

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

TAG*

PORTER ROCKWELL • • • .127

VIEW ON THE AMERICAN RIVER— THE TIACE WHERE GOLD WAS

FIRST FOUND ......... 149

GOVERNOR DAVEY'S PROCLAMATION ...... 347

PART L

AMERICA.

GREATER BRITAIN.

CHAPTER I.
VIRGINIA.

FROM the bows of the steamer Saratoga, on the 2oth June,
1866, I caught sight of the low works of Fort Monroe, as,
threading her way between the sandbanks of Capes Charles and
Henry, the ship pressed on, under sail and steam, to enter
Chesapeake Bay.

Our sudden arrival amid shoals of sharks and kingfish, the
keeping watch for flocks of canvas-back ducks, gave us enough
and to spare of idle work till we fully sighted the Yorktown
peninsula, overgrown with ancient memories — ancient for
America, Three towns of lost grandeur, or their ruins, stand
there still. Williamsburg, the former capital, graced even to
our time by the palaces where once the royal governors held
more than regal state; Yorktown, where Cornwallis surren-
dered to the Continental troops ; Jamestown, the earliest
settlement, founded in 1607, thirteen years before old Governor
Winthrop fixed the site of Plymouth, Massachusetts.

A bump against the pier of Fort Monroe soon roused us
from our musings, and we found ourselves invaded by a swarm
of stalwart negro troopers, clothed in the cavalry uniform of
the United States, who boarded us for the mails. Not a white
man save those we brought was to be seen upon the pier, and
the blazing sun made me thankful that I had declined an
offered letter to "Jeff. Davis."

Pushing off again into the stream, we ran the gauntlet cf the
Kip-Raps passage, and made for Norfolk, having on our left

B *

4 GREATER XRTTAIN. LCHAP. i.

the many exits of the Dismal Swamp Canal. Crossing Hampton
Roads — a grand bay with pleasant grassy shores, destined one
day to become the best known, as by nature it is the noblest,
of Atlantic ports — we nearly ran upon the wrecks of the Federal
frigates Cumberland and Congress, sunk by the rebel ram Merri-
mac in the first great naval action of the war ; but soon after,
by a sort of poetic justice, .we almost drifted into the black hull
of the Merrimac herself. Great gangs of negroes were labour-
ing laughingly at the removal, by blasting, of the sunken ships.

When we were securely moored at Norfolk pier, I set off
upon an inspection of the second city of Virginia. Again not
a white man was to be seen, but hundreds of negroes were
working in the heat, building, repairing, road-making, and
happily chattering the while. At last, turning a corner, I came
on an hotel, and, as a consequence, on a bar and its crowd of
swaggering whites — " Johnny Rebs " all, you might see by the
breadth of their brims, for across the Atlantic a broad-brim
denotes less the man of peace than the ex-member of a Southern
guerilla band, Morgan's, Mosby's, or Stuart's. No Southerner
will wear the Yankee " stove-pipe " hat ; a Panama or Palmetto
for him, he says, though he keeps to the long black coat that
rules from Maine to the Rio Grande.

These Southerners were all alike — all were upright, tall, and
heavily moustached ; all had long black hair and glittering eyes,
and I looked instinctively for the baldric and the rapier. It
needed no second glance to assure me that, as far as the men
of Norfolk were concerned, the saying of our Yankee skipper
was not far from truth : " The last idea that enters the mind of
a Southerner is that of doing work."

Strangers are scarce in Norfolk, and it was not long before
I found an excuse for entering into conversation with the
" citizens." My first question was not received with much
cordiality by my new acquaintance. "How do the negroes
work? Wall, we spells nigger with two 'g's,' I reckon."
Virginians, I must explain, are used to " reckon" as much as
are New Englanders to ' ' guess," while Western men " calcu-
late " as often as they cease to swear.) " How does the niggers
work? Wall, niggers is darned fools, certain, but they ain't
quite sich fools as to work while the Yanks will feed 'em. No,

CHAP, i.] VIRGINIA. §

sir, not quite sich fools as that." Hardly deeming it wise to
point to the negroes working in the sun-blaze within a hundred
yards, while we sat rocking ourselves in the verandah of the
inn, I changed my tack, and asked whether things were settling
down in Norfolk. This query soon led my friends upon the
line I wanted them to take, and in five minutes we were well
through politics, and plunging into the very war. "You're
from England. Now, all that they tell you's darned lies.
We're just as secesh as we ever was, only so many's killed that
we can't fight — that's all, I reckon." "We ain't going to fight
the North and West again," said an ex-colonel of rebel in-
fantry ; " next time we fight, 'twill be us and the West against
the Yanks. We'll keep the old flag then, and be darned to
them." " If it hadn't been for the politicians, we shouldn't
have seceded at all, I reckon : we should just have kept the
old flag and the constitution, and the Yanks would have
seceded from u?. Reckon we'd have let'em go." "Wall,
boys, s'pose we liquor," closed in the colonel, shooting out his
old quid, and filling in with another. " We'd have fought for a
lifetime if the cussed Southerners hadn't deserted like they did."
I asked who these " Southerners " were to whom such dis-
respect was being shown. " You didn't think Virginia was a
Southern State over in Britain, did you ? 'cause Virginia's a
border State, sir. We didn't go to secede at all ; it was them
blasted Southerners that brought it on us. First, they wouldn't
give a command to General Robert E. Lee, then they made us
do all the fighting for 'em, and then, when the pinch came,
they left us in the lurch. Why, sir, I saw three Mississippi
regiments surrender without a blow — yes, sir. That's right
down good whisky ; jess you sample it." Here the steam-
whistle of the Saratoga sounded with its deep bray. "Reckon
you'll have to hurry up to make connexions," said one of my
new friends, and I hurried off, not without a fear lest some of
the group should shoot after me, to avenge the affront of my
quitting them before the mixing of the drinks. They were but
a pack of " mean whites," " North Carolina crackers," but their
views were those which I found dominant in all ranks at Rich-
mond, and up tne country in Virginia.

After all, the Southern planters are not " The South,': which

6 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. i.

for political purposes is composed of the " mean whites," of
the Irish of the towns, and of the South-Western men — •
Missourians, Kentuckians, and Texans — fiercely anti-Northern,
without being in sentiment what we should call Southern :
certainly not representatives of the "Southern Chivalry." The
" mean whites," or " poor trash," are the whites who are not
planters — members of the slave-holding race who never held a
slave — white men looked down upon by the negroes. It is a
necessary result of the despotic government of one race by
another that the poor members of the dominant people are
universally despised : the " destitute Europeans " of Bombay,
the " white loafers " of the Punjaub, are familiar cases. Where
slavery exists, the " poor trash " class must inevitably be both
large and wretched : primogeniture is necessary to keep the
plantations sufficiently great to allow for the payment of over-
seers and the supporting in luxury of the planter family, and
younger sons and their descendants are not only left destitute,
but debarred from earning their bread by honest industry, for
in a slave country labour is degrading.

The Southern planters were gentlemen, possessed of many
aristocratic virtues, along with every aristocratic vice; but to
each planter there were nine "mean whites," who, though
grossly ignorant, full of insolence, given to the use of the knife
and pistol upon the slightest provocation, were, until the
election of Lincoln to the presidency, as completely the rulers
of America a^> they were afterwards the leaders of the re-
bellion.

At sunset we started up the James on our way to City Point
and Richmond, sailing almost between the very masts of the
famous rebel privateer the Florida, and seeing her as she lay
under the still, grey waters. She was cut out from a Brazilian
port, and when claimed by the imperial government was to
have been at once surrendered. While the despatches were on
their way to Norfolk, she was run into at her moorings by a
Federal gunboat, and filled and sank directly. Friends of the
confederacy have hinted that the collision was strangely oppor-
tune ; nevertheless, the fact remains that the commander of the
gunboat was dismissed the navy for his carelessness.

The twilight was beyond description lovely. The change

CHAP, i.] VISQINIA. 7

rrom the auks and ice-birds of the Atlantic to the blue-birds and
robins of Virginia was not more sudden than that from winter
to tropical warmth and sensuous indolence; but the scenery,
too, of the river is beautiful in its very changelessness. Those
who can see no beauty but in boldness, might call the James
as monotonous as the lower Loire.

After weeks of bitter cold, warm evenings favour meditation.
The soft air, the antiquity of the forest, the languor of the sun-
set breeze, all dispose to day-dream or to sleep. That oak has
seen Powhdtan ; the founders of Jamestown may have pointed
at that grand old sycamore. In this drowsy humour, we sighted
the far-famed batteries of Newport News, and turning-in to
berth or hammock, lay all night at City Point, near Petersburg.

A little before sunrise, we weighed again, and sought a
passage through the tremendous Confederate "obstructions."
Rows of iron skeletons, the frameworks of the wheels of sunken
steamers, showed above the stream, casting gaunt shadows
westward, and varied only by here and there a battered smoke-
stack or a spar. The whole of the steamers that had plied
upon the James and the canals before the war were lying here
in rows, sunk lengthwise along the stream. Two in the middle
of each row had been raised to let the Government vessels
pass, but in the heat-mist and faint light the navigation was
most difficult. For five-and-twenty miles the rebel forts were
as thick as the hills and points allowed ; yet in spite of booms
and bars, of sunken ships, of batteries and torpedoes, the
Federal Monitors once forced their way to Fort Darling in the
outer works of Richmond. I remembered thsse things a few
weeks later, when General Grant's first words to me at Wash-
ington were : " Glad to meet you. What have you seen ?
The Capitol ? Go at once and see the Monitors." He after-
wards said to me, in words that photograph not only the
Monitors, but Grant : " You can batter away at those things
for a month, and do no good."

At Dutch Gap, we came suddenly upon a curious scent.
The river flowed towards us down a long straight reach,
bounded by a lofty hill crowned with tremendous earthworks :
but through a deep trench or cleft, hardly fifty yards in length,
upon our right, we could see the sJream running with violence

8 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP, z,

in a direction parallel with our course. The hills about the
gull) were hollowed out into caves and bomb-proofs, evidently
meant as shelters from vertical fire, but the rough graves of a
vast cemetery showed that the protection was sought in vain.
Forests of crosses of unpainted wood rose upon every acre of
flat ground. On the peninsula, all but made an island by the
cleft, was a grove of giant trees, leafless, barkless, dead, and
blanched by a double change in the level of the stream. There
is no sight so sad as that of a drowned forest, with a turkey-
buzzard on each bough. On the bank upon our left was an
iron scaffold, eight or ten stories high — "Butler's Look-out,"
as the cleft was " Butler's Dutch Gap Canal." The canal, un-
finished in war, is now to be completed at State expense for
purposes of trade.

As we rounded the extremity of the peninsula, an eagle was
seen to light upon a tree. From every portion of the ship —
main deck, hurricane deck, lower deck ports — revolvers ready
capped and loaded were brought to bear upon the bird, who
sheered off unharmed amid a storm of bullets. After this
incident, I was careful in my political discussions with my
shipmates; disarmament in the Confederacy had clearly not
been extended to private weapons.

The outer and inner lines of fortifications passed, we came
in view of a many-steepled town with domes and spires re-
calling Oxford, hanging on a bank above a crimson-coloured
foaming stream. In ten minutes we were alongside the wharf
at Richmond, and in half an hour safely housed in the
" Exchange " Hotel, kept by the Messrs. Carrington, of whom
the father was a private, the son a colonel, in the rebel
Volunteers.

The next day, while the works and obstructions on the
James were still fresh in my mind, I took train to Petersburg,
the city the capture of which by Grant was the last blow struck
by the North at the melting forces of the Confederacy.

The line showed the war : here and there the track, torn up
in Northern raids, had barely been repaired ; the bridges were
burnt and broken ; the rails worn down to an iron thread.
The joke on " board," as they say here for " in the train," was
that the engine drivers down the line are tolerably 'cute men,

i.J VIRGINIA. q

who, when the rails are altogether worn away, understand how
to "go it on the bare wood," and who at all times " kno\v
where to jump."

From the window of the car we could see that in the
country there were left no mules, no horses, no roads, no men.
The solitude is not all owing to the war : in the whole five-
and-twenty miles from Richmond to Petersburg there was
before the war but a single station; in New England your
passage-card often gives a station in every two miles. A
careful look at the underwood on either side the line showed
that this forest is not primeval, that all this country had once
been ploughed.

Virginia stands first among the States for natural advan-
tages : in climate she is unequalled ; her soil is fertile ; her
mineral wealth in coal, copper, gold, and iron, enormous and
well placed; her rivers good, and her great harbour one of
the best in the world. Virginia has been planted more than
250 years, and is as large as England, yet has a free popula-
tion of only a million. In every kind of production she is
miserably inferior to Missouri or Ohio, in most inferior also to
the infant States of Michigan and Illinois. Only a quarter of
her soil is under cultivation, to half that of poor starved New
England, and the mines are deserted which were worked by
the very Indians who were driven from the land as savages a
hundred years ago.

There is no surer test of the condition of a country than the
state of its highways. In driving on the main roads round
Richmond, in visiting the scene of McClellan's great defeat on
the Chickahominy at Mechanicsville and Malvern Hill, I myself
and an American gentleman who was with me had to get out
and lay the planks upon the bridges, and then sit upon them,
to keep them down while the black coachman drove across.
The best roads in Virginia are but ill-kept " corduroys ;" but,
bad as are these, " plank roads," over which artillery have
passed, knocking out every other plank, are worse by far ; yet
such is the main road from Richmond towards the West.

There is not only a scarcity of roads, but of railroads. A
comparison of the railway system of Illinois and Indiana with
the two lines of Kentucky or the one of Western Virginia 01

ic GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. l.

Louisiana, is a comparison of the South with the North, of
slavery with freedom. Virginia shows already the decay of
age, but is blasted by slavery rather than by war.

Passing through Petersburg, the streets of which were gay
with the feathery-brown blooms of the Venetian shumach, but
almost deserted by human beings, who have not returned to
the city since they were driven out by the shot and shell, of which
their houses show the scars, we were soon in the rebel works.
There are sixty miles of these works in all, line within line,
three deep : alternations of sand-pits and sand-heaps, with here
and there a tree-trunk pierced for riflemen, and everywhere a
double row of cfievaux de frise. The forts nearest this point
were named by their rebel occupants Fort Hell and Fort
Damnation. Tremendous works, but it needed no long in-
terview with Grant to understand their capture. I had not
been ten minutes in his office at Washington before I saw
that the secret of his unvarying success lay in his unflinching
determination : there is pith in the American conceit which
reads in his initials, " U. S. G.," " unconditional-surrender
Grant."

The works defending Richmond, hardly so strong as those
of Petersburg, were attacked in a novel manner in the third
year of the war. A strong body of Federal cavalry on a raid,
unsupported by infantry or guns, came suddenly by night upon
the outer lines of Richmond. Something had led them to
believe that the rebels were not in force, and with the strange
aimless daring that animated both parties during the rebellion,
they rode straight in along the winding road, unchallenged,
and came up to the inner lines. There they were met by a
volley which emptied a few saddles, and retired without even
stopping to spike the guns in the Outer works. Had they
known enough of the troops opposed to them to have con-
tinued to advance, they might have taken Richmond, and held
it long enough to have captured the rebel president and senate,
and burned the great iron-works and ships. The whole of the
rebel army had gone north, and even the home guard was
camped out on the Chickahominy. The troops who fired the
volley were a company of the " iron-works battalion," boys
employed at the foundries, not one of whom had ever fired a

CHAP, i.] VIRGINIA. ix

i irle before this night. They confessed themselves that "one
minute more, and they'd have run ;" but the volley just stopped
the enemy in time.

The spot where we first struck the rebel lines was that
known as the Crater — the funnel-shaped cavity formed when
Grant sprang his famous mine. One thousand five hundred
men are buried in the hollow itself, and the bones of those
smothered by the falling earth are working through the soil.
Five thousand negro troops were killed in this attack, and are
buried round the hollow where they died, fighting as gallantly
as they fought everywhere throughout the war. It is a singular
testimony to the continuousness of the fire, that the still re-
maining subterranean passages show that in countermining the
rebels came once within three feet of the mine, yet failed to
hear the working parties. Thousands of old army shoes were
lying on the earth, and negro boys were digging up bullets for
old lead.

Within eighty yards of the Crater are the Federal investing
lines, on which the trumpet flower of our gardens was growing
wild in deep rich masses. The negroes told me not to gather
it, because they believe it scalds the hand. They call it " poison
plant," or " blister weed." The blue-birds and scarlet tannagers
were playing about the horn-shaped flowers.

Just within Grant's earthworks are the ruins of an ancient
church, built, it is said, with bricks that were brought by the
first colonists from England. About Norfolk, about Petersburg,
and in the Shenandoah Valley, you cannot ride twenty miles
through the Virginian forest without bursting in upon some
glade containing a quaint old church, or a creeper-covered roofless
palace of the Culpeppers. the Randolphs, or the Scotts. The
county names have in them all a history. Taking the letter " B "
alone we have Barbour, Bath, Bedford, Berkeley, Boone, Bote-
tourt, Braxton, Brooke, Brunswick, Buchanan, Buckingham. A
dozen counties in the State are named from kings or princes.
The slave-owning cavaliers whose names the remainder bear are
the men most truly guilty of the late attempt made by their descen-
dants to create an empire founded on disloyalty and oppression;
but within sight of this old church of theirs at Petersburg, thirty-
three miles of Federal outworks stand as a monument of how

it GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. i.

the attempt was crushed by the children of their New England
brother-colonists.

The naraes of streams and hamlets in Virginia have often a
quaint English ring. On the Potomac, near Harper's Ferry, I
once came upon " Sir John's Run." Upon my asking a tall
gaunt fellow who was fishing, whether this was the spot on which
the Knight of Windsor " larded the lea.n earth," I got for sole
answer: " Wall, don't know 'bout that, but it's a mighty fine spot
for yellow-fin trout." The entry to Virginia is characteristic.
You sail between capes named from the sons of James I., and
have fronting you the estuaries of two rivers called after
Charles II. and the Duke of York.

The old " F. F. V's," the first families of Virginia, whose
founders gave these monarchic names to the rivers and counties
of the State, are far off now in Texas and California — those,
that is, which were not extinct before the war. The tenth
Lord Fairfax keeps a tiny ranch near San Francisco ; some of
the chief Denmans are also to be found in California. In all
such cases of which I heard, the emigration took place before
the war; northern conquest could not be made use of as a
plea whereby to escape the reproaches due to the slave-owning
system. There is a stroke of justice in the fact that the
Virginian oligarchy have ruined themselves in ruining their
State ; but the gaming hells of Farobankopolis, as Richmond
once was called, have much for which to answer.

When the " burnt district " comes to be rebuilt, Richmond
will be the most beautiful of all the Atlantic cities ; while the
water-power of the rapids of the James, and a situation at
the junction of canal and river, secure for it a prosperous
future.

The superb position of the State House (which formed the
rebel capitol), on the brow of a long hill, whence it overhangs
the city and the James, has in it something of satire. The
Parliament-house of George Washington's own State, the State
House contains the famed statue set up by the general assembly
of the Commonwealth of Virginia to the hero's memory. With-
out the building stands the still more noteworthy bronze statue ol
the first President, erected jointly by all tne States in the then
Union. That such monuments should overlook the battle-fields

OBAP. i/j VIRGINIA. 13

of the war provoked by the secession from the Union of Washing-
ton's loved Virginia, is a fact full of the grim irony of history.

Hollywood, the cemetery of Richmond, is a place full of
touching sad suggestion, and very beautiful, with deep shades
and rippling streams. During the war there were hospitals in
Richmond for 20,000 men, and "always full," they say. The
Richmond men who were killed in battle were buried where they
fell, but 8000 who died in hospital are buried here, and over them
is placed a wooden cross, with the inscription in black paint,
"Dead, but not forgotten." In another spot lie the Union
dead, under the shadow of the flag for which they died.

From Monroe's tomb the evening view is singularly soft and
calm; the quieter and calmer for the drone in which are mingled
the trills of the mocking-bird, the hoarse croaking of the bull-frog,
the hum of the myriad fire-flies, that glow like summer light-
ning among the trees, the distant roar of the river, of which
the rich red water can still be seen, beaten on the rocks into a
rosy foam.

With the moment's chillness of the sunset breeze, the golden
glory of the heavens fades into grey, and there comes quickly
over them the solemn blueness of the Southern night. Thoughts
are springing up of the many thousand unnamed graves, where
the rebel soldiers lie unknown, when the Federal drums ir
Richmond begin sharply beating the rappe!.

14 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. 11

.CHAPTER IL

THE NEGRO.

IN the back country of Virginia, and on the borders of Nortl
Carolina, it becomes clear that our common English notions of
the negro and of slavery are nearer the truth than common
notions often are. The London Christy Minstrels are not
more given to bursts of laughter of the form " Yah ! Yah ! " than
are the plantation hands. The negroes upon the Virginian
farms are not maligned by those who represent them as delight-
ing in the contrast of crimson and yellow, or emerald and sky-
blue. I have seen them on a Sunday afternoon, dressed in
scarlet waistcoats and gold-laced cravats, returning hurriedly
from "meetin'," to dance break-downs, and grin from ear to
ear for hours at a time. What better should we expect from
men to whom until just now it was forbidden, under tremendous
penalties, to teach their letters ?

Nothing can force the planters to treat negro freedom save
from the comic side. To them the thing is too new for thought,
too strange for argument; the ridiculous lies on the surface,
and to this they turn as a relief. When I asked a planter how
the blacks prospered under freedom, his answer was, " Ours
don't much like it. You see, it necessitates monogamy. If I
talk about the 'responsibilities of freedom,' Sambo says, 'Dunno
'bout that; please, mass' George, me want two wife.' " Another
planter tells me, that the only change that he can see in the
condition of the negroes since they have been free, is that formerly
the supervision of the overseer forced them occasionally to be
clean, whereas now nothing on earth can make them wash. He
says that, writing lately to his agent, he received an answer to
which there was the following postscript : " You ain't sent no

CHAP, n.] THE NEGRO. IS

sope. You had better sent sope : niggers is certainly needing
sope."

It is easy to treat the negro question in this way ; easy, on
the other hand, to assert that since history fails us as a guide
to the future of the emancipated blacks, we should see what time
will bring, and meanwhile set down negroes as a monster class
of which nothing is yet known, and, like the compilers of the
Catalan map, say of places of which we have no knowledge,
" Here be giants, cannibals, and negroes." As long as we
possess Jamaica, and are masters upon the African west coast,
the negro question is one of moment to ourselves. It is one,
too, of mightier import, for it is bound up with the future of
the English in America. It is by no means a question to be
passed over as a joke. There are five millions of negroes in
the United States ; juries throughout ten States of the Union
are mainly chosen from the black race. The matter is not
only serious, but full of interest, political, ethnological, historic.

In the South you must take nothing upon trust; believe
nothing you are told. Nowhere in the world do " facts " appear
so differently to those who view them through spectacles of
yellow or of rose. The old planters tell you that all is ruin —
that they have but half the hands they need, and from each
hand but a half-day's work : the new men, with Northern
energy and Northern capital, tell you that they get on very
well.

The old Southern planters find it hard to rid themselves of
their traditions ; they cannot understand free blacks, and slavery
makes not only the slaves but the masters shiftless. They have
no cash, and the Metayer system gives rise to the suspicion of
some fraud, for the negroes are very distrustful of the honesty
of their former masters.

The worst of the evils that must inevitably grow out of the
sudden emancipation of millions of slaves have not shown
themselves as yet, in consequence of the great amount of work
that has to be done in the cities of the South, in repairing the
ruin caused during the war by fire and want of care, and in
building places of business for the Northern capitalists. The
negroes of Virginia and North Carolina have flocked down to
the towns and ports by the thousand, and find in Norfolk,

16 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP n

Richmond, Wilmington, and Fort Monroe employment for the
moment. Their absence from the plantations makes labour
dear up country, and this in itself tempts the negroes who
runiain on land to work sturdily for wages. Seven dollars a
month — at the then rate equal to one pound — with board and
lodging, were being paid to black field-hands on the corn and
tobacco farms near Richmond. It is when the city works are
over that pressure will come upon the South.

Already the negroes are beginning to ask for land, and they
complain loudly that none of the confiscated lands have been
assigned to them. " Ef yer dun gib us de land, reckon de ole
massas '11 starb de niggahs," was a plain, straightforward sum-
mary of the negro view of the negro question, given me by a
white-bearded old " uncle " in Richmond, and backed by every
black man within hearing in a chorus of " Dat's true, for shore ;"
but I found up the country, that the planters are afraid to let
the negroes own or farm for themselves the smallest plot of
land, for fear that they should sell ten times as much as they
grew, stealing their " crop " from the granaries of their em-
ployers.

At a farm near Petersburg, owned by a Northern capitalist,
1000 acres, which before emancipation had been tilled by
100 slaves, now needed, I was told, but forty freedmen for
their cultivation ; but when I reached the place, I found that
the former number included old people and women, while the
forty were all hale men. The men were paid upon the tally
system. A card was given them for each day's work, which
was accepted at the plantation store in payment for goods
supplied, and at the end of the month money was paid for the
remaining tickets. The planters say that the field hands will
not support their old people ; but this means only that, like
white folk, they try to make as much money as they can, and
know that if they plead the wants of their wives and children,
the whites will keep their aged folk.

That the negro slaves were lazy, thriftless, unchaste, and
thieves, is true ; but it is as slaves, and not as negroes, that
they were all these things ; and, after all, the effects of slavery
upon the slave are less terrible than its effects upon the master.
The moral condition to which the planter class had been

CHAI-. li.J TBE NE6&0. 1 j

brought by slavery, shows out plainly in the speeches of the
rebel leaders. Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-President of the
Confederacy, declared in 1861 that " Slavery is the natural and
moral condition of the negro. ... I cannot permit myself to
doubt," he went on, " the ultimate success of a full recognition
of this principle throughout the civilized and enlightened
world .... negro slavery is in its infancy."

There is reason to believe that the American negroes will
justify the hopes of their friends : they have made the best of
every chance that has been given them as yet ; they were good
soldiers, they are eager to learn their letters, they are steady at
their work : — in Barbadoes they are industrious and well-con-
ducted ; in La Plata they are exemplary citizens. In America
the coloured labourer has had no motive to be industrious.

General Grant assured me of the great aptness at soldiering
shown by the negro troops. In battle they displayed extraor-
dinary courage, but if their officers were picked off they could
not stand a charge ; no more, he said, could their Southern
masters. The power of standing firm after the loss of leaders
is possessed only by regiments where every private is as good
as his captain and colonel, such as the North-western and New
England volunteers.

Before I left Richmond, I had one morning found my way
into a school for the younger blacks. There were as many
present as the forms would hold — sixty, perhaps, in all — and
three wounded New England soldiers, with pale thin faces,
were patiently teaching them to write. The boys seemed
quick and apt enough, but they were very raw — only a week or
two in the school. Since the time when Oberlin first pro-
claimed the potential equality of the race, by admitting negroes
as freely as white men and women to the college, the negroes
have never been backward to learn.

It must not be supposed that the negro is wanting in abilities
of a certain kind. Even in the imbecility of the Congo dance
we note his unrivalled mimetic power. The religious side of
the negio character is full of weird suggestiveness ; but super-
stition, everywhere the handmaid of ignorance, is rife among
the black plantation-hands. It is thought that the punishment
with which the shameful rites of Obi-worship have been visited

rfl QttEA TEtt XtolTAltt. [CHAP. it.

has proved, even in the city of New Orleans, insufficient to
prevent them. Charges of witchcraft aie <is common in Vir-
ginia as in Orissa : in the Carolinas, as in Central India, the
use of poison is often sought to work out the events foretold
by some noted sorceress. In no direction can the matter be
followed out to its conclusions without bringing us face to face
with the sad fact, that the faults of the plantation negro are
every one of them traceable to the vices of the slavery system,
and that the Americans of to-day are suffering beyond measure
foi evils for which our forefathers are responsible. We our-
selves are not guiltless of wrong-doing in this matter : if it is
still impossible openly to advocate slavery in England, it has at
least become a habit persistently to write down freedom. We
are no longer told that God made the blacks to be slaves, but
we arc bade remember that they cannot prosper under emanci-
pation. All mention of Barbadoes is suppressed, but we have
daily homilies on the condition of Jamaica. The negro ques-
tion in America is briefly this : is there, on the one hand,
reason to fear that, dollars applied to land decreasing while
black mouths to be fed increase, the Southern States will
become an American Jamaica? is there, on the other hand,
ground for the hope that the negroes may be found not incap-
able of the citizenship of the United States ? The former of
these two questions is the more difficult, and to some extent
involves the latter : can cotton, can sugar, can rice, can coffee,
can tobacco, be raised by white field-hands? If not, can they
be raised with profit by black free labour ? Can co-operative
planting, directed by negro overlookers, possibly succeed, or
must the farm be ruled by white capitalists, agents, and over-
seers ?

It is asserted that the negro will not work without compul-
sion ; but the same may be said of the European. There is
compulsion of many kinds. The emancipated negro may still
be forced to work — forced as the white man is forced in this
and other lands, by the alternative, work or starve ! This
forcing, however, may not be confined to that which the laws
of natural increase lead us to expect ; it may be stimulated by
bounties on immigration.

Tie negro is not, it would seem, to have a monopoly of

OMAP. n.] THE NEGRO. 19

Southern labour in this continent This week we hear of three
shiploads of Chinese coolies as just landed in Louisiana ; and
the air is thick with rumours of labour from Bombay, from
Calcutta, from the Pacific islands — of Eastern labour in its
hundred shapes — not to speak of competition with the whites,
now commencing with the German immigration into Tennessee.

The berries of this country are so large, so many, so full ot
juice, that alone they form a never-failing source of nourishment
to an idle population. Three kinds of cranberries, American,
pied, and English ; two blackberries, huckleberries, high-bush
and low-bush blueberries — the latter being the English bilberry
— are among the best known of the native fruits. No one in
this country, however idle he be, need starve. If he goes
farther south, he has the banana, the true staff of life.

The terrible results of the plentiful possession of this tree are
seen in Ceylon, at Panama, in the coast-lands of Mexico, in
the South Sea Archipelago. At Pitcairn's Island the plantain
grove has beaten the missionary from the field ; there is much
lip-Christianity, but no practice to be got from a people who
possess the fatal plant. The much abused cocoa-nut cannot
come near it as a devil's agent. The cocoa-palm is confined to
a few islands and coast tracts — confined, too, to the tropics and
sea-level ; the plantain and banana extend over seventy degrees
of latitude, down to Botany Bay and King George's Sound, and
up as far north as the Khyber Pass. The palm asks labour —
not much, it is true ; but still a few days' hard work in the year
in trenching, and climbing after the nuts. The plantain grows
as a weed, and hangs down its bunches of ripe tempting fruit
into your lap, as you lie in its cool shade. The cocoa-nut tree
has a hundred uses, and urges man to work to make spirit from
its juice ; ropes, clothes, matting, bags, from its fibre ; oil from
the pulp ; it creates an export trade which appeals to almost all
men by their weakest side, in offering large and quick returns
for little work. John Ross's " Isle of Cocoas," to the west of
Java and south of Ceylon, yields him heavy gains ; there are
profits to be made upon the Liberian coast, and even in Southern
India and Ceylon. The plantain will make nothing ; you can
eat it raw or fried, and that is all ; you can eat it every day of
your life without becoming tired of its taste ; without suffering

c a

ao GREATER BRrTAIS. [CHAP. 11.

in your health, jou can live on it exclusively. In the banana
groves of Florida and Louisiana there lurk much trouble and
danger to the American free States.

The negroes have hardly much chance in Virginia against
the Northern capitalists, provided with white labour; but the
States of Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, and South Carolina,
promise to be wholly theirs. Already they are flocking to
places in which they have a majority of the people, and can
control the municipalities and defend themselves, if necessary,
by force ; but even if the Southerners of the coast desert their
country, the negroes will not have it to themselves, unless
nature declares that they shall. New Englanders will pour in
with capital and energy, and cultivate the land by free black or
by coolie labour, if either will pay. If they do pay, competi-
tion will force the remaining blacks to work or starve.

The friends of the negro are not without a fear that the
labourers will be too many for their work ; for, while the older
cotton States appear to be worn out, the new, such as Texas
and Tennessee, will be reserved by public opinion to the whites.
For the present the negroes will be masters in seven of the
rebel States ; but in Texas, white men — English, Germans, and
Danes — are growing cotton with success ; and in Georgia and
North Carolina, which contain mountain districts, the negro
power is not likely to be permanent

We may, perhaps, lay it down as a general principle that,
when the negro can fight his way through opposition, and stand
alone as a farmer or labourer, without the aid of private or
State charity, then he should be protected in the position he
has shown himself worthy to hold, that of a free citizen of an
enlightened and labouring community. Where it is found that
when his circumstances have ceased to be exceptional the negro
cannot live unassisted, there the Federal Government may
fairly and wisely step in and say, " We will not keep you ; but
we will carry you to Liberia or to Hayti, if you will."

It is clear that the Southern negroes must be given a decisive
voice in the appointment of the legislatures by which they are
to be ruled, or that the North must be prepared to back up by
force of opinion, or, if need be, by force of arms, the Federal
Executive, when it insists on the Civil Rights Bill being set in

CHAP 0/j THE NEGSO. 1«

action at the South. Government through the negroes is the
only way to avoid government through an army, which would
be dangerous to the freedom of the North.

A reading and writing basis for the suffrage in the Southern
States is an absurdity. Coupled with pardons to the rebels, it
would allow the " boys-in-grey " — the soldiers of the Confederacy
— to control nine States of the Union; it would render the
education of the freedmen hopeless. For the moment, it would
entirely disfranchise the negroes in six States, whereas it is
exactly for the moment that negro suffrage is in these States
necessary ; while, if the rebels were admitted to vote, and the
negroes excluded from the poll, the Southern representatives,
united with the Copperhead wing of the democratic party, might
prove to be strong enough to repudiate the Federal debt This
is one of a dozen dangers.

An education basis for the suffrage, though pretended to be
impartial, would be manifestly aimed against the negroes, and
would perpetuate the antipathy of colour to which the war is
supposed to have put an end. To education such a provision
would be a death blow. If the negroes were to vote as soot
as they could read, it is certain that the planters would take
good care that they never should read at all.

That men should be able to examine into the details of
politics is not entirely necessary to the working of repre-
sentative government. It is sufficient that they should be
competent to select men to do it for them. In the highest
form of representative government, where all the electors are
both intelligent, educated, and alive to the politics of the time,
then the member returned must tend more and more to be a
delegate. That has always been the case with the Northern and
Western members in America, but never with those returned by
the Southern States ; and so it will continue, whether the
Southern elections be decided by negroes or by " mean whites."

In Warren county, Mississippi, near Vicksburg, is a plantation
which belongs to Joseph Davis, the brother of the rebel Presi
dent. This he has leased to Mr. Montgomery — once his slave— •
in order that an association of blacks may be formed to cultivate
the plantation on co-operative principles. It is to be managed
by a council elected by the community at large, and a voluntary

*a GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. n.

poor-rate and embankment rate are to be levied on the people
by themselves.

It is only a year since the termination of the war, and the
negroes are already in possession of schools, village corporations,
of the Metayer system, of co-operative farms ; all this tells ot
rapid advance, and the conduct and circulation of the New
Orleans Tribune, edited and published by negroes, and selling
10,000 copies daily, and another 10,000 of the weekly issue,
speaks well for the progress of the blacks. If the Montgomery
experiment succeeds, their future is secure.

CHAPTER 111.
THE SOUTH.

THE political forecasts and opinions which were given me
upon plantations, were, in a great measure, those indicated in
my talk with the Norfolk " loafers." On the history of the
commencement of the rebellion there was singular unanimity.
" Virginia never meant to quit the Union ; we were cheated by
those rascals of the South. When we did go out, we were left
to do all the fighting. Why, sir, I've seen a Mississippian
division run away from a single Yankee regiment."

As I heard much the same story from the North Carolinans
that I met, it would seem as though there was little union
among the seceding States. The legend upon the first of all
the secession flags that were hoisted, was typical of this devotion
to the fortunes of the State : " Death to abolitionists ; South
Carolina goes it alone ;" and during the whole war, it was not
the rebel colours, but the palmetto emblem, or other State
devices, that the ladies wore.

About the war itself but little is said, though here and there I
met a man who would tell camp stories in the Northern style.
One planter who had been " out " himself, went so far as to say
to me : " Our officers were good, but considering that our rank
and file were just ' white-trash,' and that they had to fight
regiments of New England Yankee volunteers, with all their
best blood in the ranks, and Western sharpshooters together,
it's only wonderful how we weren't whipped sooner."

As for the future, the planters' policy is a simple one : " Reckon
we're whipped, so we go in now for the old flag ; only those
Yankee rogues must give us the control of our own people,"
The one result of the war has been, as they believe, the

>4 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHA*. m.

abolition of slavery ; otherwise the situation is unchanged.
The war is over, the doctrine of secession is allowed to fall into
the background, and the ex-rebels claim to step once more
into their former place, if, indeed, they admit that they ever
left it.

Every day that you are in the South, you come more and
more to see that the " mean whites " are the controlling power.
The landowners are not only few in number, but their apathy
during the present crisis is surprising. The men who demand
their re-admission to the government of eleven states are un-
kempt, fierce-eyed fellows, not one whit better than the brancos
of Brazil ; the very men, strangely enough, who themselves, in
their " Leavenworth constitution," first began disfranchisement,
declaring that the qualification for electors in the new State of
Kansas should be the taking oath to uphold the infamous
Fugitive Slave Law.

These " mean whites " were the men who brought about
secession. The planters are guiltless of everything but criminal
indifference to the deeds that were committed in their name.
Secession was the act of a pack of noisy demagogues ; but a
false idea of honour brought round a majority of the Southern
people, and the infection of enthusiasm carried over the
remainder.

When the war sprang up, the old Southern contempt for the
Yankees broke out into a fierce burst of joy, that the day had
come for paying off old scores. " We hate them, sir," said an
old planter to me. " I wish to God that the Mayflower had
sunk with all hands in Plymouth Bay!"

Along with this violence of language, there is a singular kind
of cringing to the conquerors. Time after time I heard the
complaint, " The Yanks treat us shamefully, I reckon. We
come back to the Union, and give in on every point ; we
renounce slavery ; we consent to forget the past ; and yet they
won't restore us to our rights." Whenever I came to ask what
they meant by " rights," I found the same haziness that every-
where surrounds that word. The Southerners seem to think
that men may rebel and fight to the death against their country,
and then, being beaten, lay down their arms and walk quietly
to the polls along with law-abiding citizeps, secure in th«

OH A i- in/) THE SOUTH. 3$

protection of the Constitution which for years they have fought
to subvert.

At Richmond I had a conversation which may serve as a
specimen of what one hears each moment from the planters.
An old gentleman with whom I was talking politics opened at
me suddenly : " The Radicals are going to give the ballot to
our niggers to strengthen their party, but they know better than
to give it to their Northern niggers."

D. — " But surely there's a difference in the cases."

The Planter. — " You're right — there is ; but not your way
The difference is, that the Northern niggers can read and write
and even lie with consistency, and ours can't."

D. — " But there's the wider difference, that negro suffrage
down here is a necessity, unless you are to rule the country
that's just beaten you."

The Planter. — "Well, there of course we differ. We rebs
say we fought to take our States out of the Union. The Yanks
beat us ; so our States must still be in the Union. If so, why
shouldn't our representatives be unconditionally admitted ?"

Nearer to a conclusion we of course did not come, he
declaring that no man ought to vote who had not education
enough to understand the constitution ; I, that this was good
prima facie evidence against letting him vote, but that it might
be rebutted by the proof of a higher necessity for his voting.
As a planter said to me, " The Southerners prefer soldier rule
to nigger rule ;" but it is not a question of what they prefer,
but of what course is necessary for the safety of the Union
which they fought to destroy.

Nowhere in the Southern States did I find any expectation
of a fresh rebellion. It is. only Englishmen who ask whether
" the South " will not fight " once more." The South is dead
and gone ; there can never be a " South " again, but only so
many Southern States. " The South " meant simply the slave
country ; and slavery being dead, it is dead. Slavery gave us
but two classes besides the negroes — planters and "mean
whites." The great planters were but a few thousand in number :
they are gone to Canada, England, Jamaica, California, Colo-
rado, Texas. The "mean whites" — the true South — are im-
possible in the fuce of free labour; they must work or starve-

J6 GREATER BRITAIN. ' [CHAP, in,

If they work, they will no longer be "mean whites," but
essentially Northerners — that is, citizens of a democratic re-
public, and not oligarchists.

As the Southerners admit that there can be no further war,
it would be better even for themselves that they should allow
the sad record of their rising to fade away. Their newspapers
continue to make use of language which nothing could excuse,
and which, in the face of the magnanimity of the conquerors, is
disgraceful. In a Mobile paper I have seen a leader which
describes with hideous minuteness, Lincoln. Lane, John Brown,
and Dostie playing whist in hell. A Texas cutting which I
have is less blasphemous, but not less vile : " The English
language no longer affords terms in which to curse a snivelling
weazen-faced piece of humanity generally denominated a Yankee.
We see some about here sometimes, but they skulk around,
like sheep-killing dogs, and associate mostly with niggers. They
whine and prate, and talk about the judgment of God, as if
God had anything to do with them." The Southerners have
not even the wit or grace to admit that the men who beat
them were good soldiers ; " blackguards and braggarts," "cravens
and thieves," are common names for the men of the Union
army. I have in my possession an Alabama paper in which
General Sheridan, at that time the commander of the military
division which included the State, is styled " a short-tailed slimy
tadpole of the later spawn, the blathering disgrace of an honest
father, and everlasting libel on his Irish blood, the synonym of
infamy, and scorn of all brave men." While I was in Virginia,
one of the Richmond papers said : " This thing of ' loyalty '
will not do for the Southern man."

The very day that I landed in the South, a dinner was given
at Richmond by the " Greys " — a volunteer corps which had
fought through the rebellion. After the roll of honour, or list
of men killed in battle, had been read, there were given as
toasts, by rebel officers: "Jeff. Davis — the caged eagle; the
bars confine his person, but his great spirit soars ;" and " The
conquered banner, may its resurrection at last be as bright and
as glorious as theirs — the dead."

It is in the face of such words as these that Mr. Johnson,
the most unteachable of mortals, asks men who have sacrificed

CHAP, ni/1 THE SOUTH. 37

their sons to restore the Union, to admit the ex-rebels to a
considerable share in the government of the nation, even if
they are not to monopolize it, as they did before the war.
His conduct seems to need the Western editor's defence : " He
must be kinder honest-like, he aire sich a tarnation foolish
critter."

It is clear from the occurrence of such dinners, the publica-
tion of such paragraphs and leaders as those of which I have
spoken, that there is no military tyranny existing in the South.
The country is indeed administered by military commanders,
but it is not ruled by troops.* Before we can give ear to the
stories that are afloat in Europe of the " government of major-
generals," we must believe that five millions of Englishmen
inhabiting a country as large as Europe are crushed down by
some ten thousand men — about as many as are needed to
keep order in the single town of Warsaw. The Southerners
are allowed to rule themselves ; the question now at issue is
merely whether they shall also rule their former slaves, the
negroes.

I hardly felt myself out of the reach of slavery and rebellion
till, steaming up the Potomac from Acquia Creek, by the grey
dawn, I caught sight of a grand pile towering over a city from
a magnificent situation on the brow of a long rolling hill.
Just at the moment, the sun, invisible as yet to us below, struck
the marble dome and cupola, and threw the bright gilding into
a golden blaze, till the Greek shape stood out upon the blue
sky, glowing like a second sun. The city was Washington ; the
palace with the burnished cupola, the Capitol ; and within two
hours I was present at the "hot-weather sitting" of the 39th
Congress of the United States.

* Civil government is now restored throughout the greater portion of tht
South.— 1869.

28 GREATER BRITAIN. ciu* rv.

CHAPTER IV.

THE EMPIRE STATE.

AT the far south of New York City, where the Hudson and
East River meet to form the inner bay, is an ill-kept park that
might be made the loveliest garden in the world. Nowhere do
the features that have caused New York to take rank as the
first port of America stand forth more clearly. The soft evening
breeze tells of a climate as good as the world can show ; the
setting sun floods with light a harbour secure and vast, formed
by the confluence of noble streams, and girt with quays at
which huge ships jostle ; the rows of 5oo-pounder Rodmans at
" The Narrows " are tokens of the nations strength and wealth ;
and the yachts, as well handled as our own, racing into port
from an ocean regatta, give evidence that there are Saxons in
the land. At the back is the city, teeming with life, humming
with trade, muttering with the thunder of passage. Opposite,
in Jersey City, people say : " Every New Yorker has come a
good half-hour late into the world, and is trying all his life to
make it up." The bustle is immense.

All is so un-English, so foreign, that hearing men speaking
what Czar Nicholas was used to call " the American tongue," I
wheel round, crying — " Dear me I if here are not some English
folk !" astonished as though I had heard French in Australia or
Italian in Timbuctoo.

The Englishman who, coining to America, expects to find
cities that smell of home, soon learns that Baker Street itself,
or Portland Place, would not look English in the dry air of a
continent four thousand miles across. New York, however, is
still less English than is Boston, Philadelphia, or Chicago — her
people are as little Saxon as her streets. Once Southern, with

CHAP, iv.] THE EMPIRE STATE. 39

the brand of slavery deeply printed in the foreheads of her
foremost men, since the defeat of the rebellion New York has
to the eye been cosmopolitan as any city of the Levant. All
nationless towns are not alike : Alexandria has a Greek or an
Italian tinge : San Francisco an English tone, with something
of the heartiness of our Elizabethan times ; New York has a
deep Latin shade, and the democracy of the empire-state is of
the French, not of the American or English type.

At the back, here, on the city side, are .tall gaunt houses,
painted red, like those on the quay at Dort or on the Boompjes
at Rotterdam, the former dwellings of the " Knickerbockers "
of New Amsterdam, the founders of New York, but now for-
gotten. There may be a few square yards of painting, red or
blue, upon the houses in Broadway ; there may be here and
there a pagoda summer-house overhanging a canal ; once in a
year you may run across a worthy descendant of the old Nether-
landish families ; but in the main the Hollanders in America
are as though they had never been : to find the memorials of
lost Dutch empire, we must search Cape Colony or Ceylon.
The New York un-English tone is not Batavian. Neither the
sons of the men who once lived in these houses, nor the Germans
whose names are now upon the doors, nor, for the matter of
that, we English, who claim New York as the second of our
towns, are the to-day's New Yorkers.

Here, on the water's edge, is a rickety hall, where Jenny Lind
sang when first she landed — now the spot where strangers of
another kind are welcomed to America. Every true republican
has in his heart the notion that his country is pointed out by
God as a refuge for the distressed of all the nations. He has
himself sprung from men who came to seek a sanctuary — from
the Quakers, or the Catholics, or the pilgrims of the Mayflower.
Even though they come to take the bread from his mouth, or
to destroy his peace, it is his duty, he believes, to aid the immi-
grants. Within the last twenty years there have landed at New
York alone four million strangers. Of these two-thirds were
Irish.

While the Celtic men are pouring.into New York and Boston
the New Englanders and New Yorkers, too, are moving. They
are not dying. Facts are opposed to this portentous theory,

jo GREATER B&ITATN. {CHAP. vr.

They are going west. The unrest of the Celt is mainly caused
by discontent with his country's present, that of the Saxon by
hope for his private future. The Irishman flies to New York
because it lies away from Ireland ; the Englishman takes it upon
his road to California.

Where one race is dominant, immigrants of another blood
soon lose their nationality. In New York and Boston the Irish
continue to be Celts, for these are Irish cities. In Pittsburg, in
Chicago, still more in the country districts, a few years make
the veriest Paddy English. On the other hand, the Saxons are
disappearing from the Atlantic cities, as the Spaniards have gone
from Mexico. The Irish here are beating down the English,
as the English have crushed out the Dutch. The Hollander's
descendants in New York are English now ; it bids fair that
the Saxon's should be Irish.

As it is, though the Celtic immigration has lasted only twenty
years, the results are already clear : if you see a Saxon face upon
the Broadway, you may be sure it belongs to a traveller, or to
some raw English lad bound west, just landed from a Plymouth
ship. We need not lay much stress upon the fact that all New
Yorkers have black hair and beard : men may be swarthy and '
yet English. The ancestors of the Londoners of to-day, we
are told, were yellow-headed roysterers ; yet not one man in
fifty that you meet in Fleet Street or on Tower Hill is as fair
as the average Saxon peasant. Doubtless, our English eastern
counties were peopled in the main by low-Dutch and Flemings :
the Sussex eyes and hair are rarely seen in Suffolk. The Puritans
of New England are sprung from those of the "associated
counties," but the victors of Marston Moor may have been
cousins to those no less sturdy Protestants, the Hollanders who
defended Leyden. It may be that they were our ancestors,
those Dutchmen that we English crowded out of New Amsterdam
— the very place where we are sharing the fate we dealt. The
fiery temper of the new people of the American coast towns,
their impatience of free government, are better proofs of Celtic
blood than are the colour of their eyes and beard.

Year by year the towns grow more and more intensely Irish.
Already of every four births in Boston, one only is American.
There are 120,000 foreign to 70,000 native voters in NewYorfc

.1 THE fiMPr&E STATE. )j

and Brooklyn. Montreal and Richmond are fast becoming
Celtic ; Philadelphia-— shades of Penn ! — can only be saved by
the aid of its Bavarians. Saxon Protestantism is departing with
the Saxons : the revenues of the empire-state are spent upon
Catholic asylums ; plots of city land are sold at nominal rates
for the sites of Catholic cathedrals, by the " city j/<^>-fathers," as
they are called. Not even in the West does the Latin Church
gain ground more rapidly than in New York city : there are
80,000 professing Catholics in Boston.

When is this drama, of which the first scene is played in
Castle Gardens, to have its close ? The matter is grave enough
already. Ten years ago, the third and fourth cities of the world,
New York and Philadelphia, were as English as our London :
the one is Irish now ; the other all but German. Not that the
Quaker city will remain Teutonic : the Germans, too, are going
out upon the land ; the Irish alone pour in unceasingly. All
great American towns will soon be Celtic, while the country
continues English : a fierce and easily-roused people will throng
the cities, while the law-abiding Saxons who till the land will
cease to rule it. Our relations with America are matters of
small moment by the side of the one great question : Who are
the Americans to be ?

Our kinsmen are by no means blind to the dangers that hang
over them. The " know-nothing " movement failed, but Pro-
tection speaks the same voice in its opposition to commercial
centres. If you ask a Western man why he, whose interest is
clearly in Free Trade, should advocate Protection, he fires out :
" Free Trade is good for our American pockets, but it's death
to us Americans. All your Bastiats and Mills won't touch the
fact that to us Free Trade must mean salt-water despotism, and
the ascendency of New York and Boston. Which is better for
the country — one New York, or ten contented Pittsburgs and
ten industrious Lowells ?"

The danger to our race and to the world from Irish ascendency
is perhaps less imminent than that to the republic. In January
1862, the Mayor, Fernando Wood, the elect of the " Mozart"
democracy, deliberately proposed the secession from the Union
of New York City. Of all the Northern States, New York alone
was a dead weight upon the loyal people during the war of the

}* GREATER KRTTATy. [dttAP. vr.

rebellion. The constituents of Wood were the very Fenians
whom in our ignorance we call " American." It is America
that Fenianism invades from Ireland — not England from
America.

It is no unfair attack upon the Irish to represent them as
somewhat dangerous inhabitants for mighty cities. Of the
sixty thousand persons arrested yearly in New York, three-
fourths are alien born : two-thirds of these are Irish. Nowhere
else in all America are the Celts at present masters of a city
government — nowhere is there such corruption. The purity of
the government of Melbourne — a city more democratic than
New York — proves that the fault does not lie in democracy : it
is the universal opinion of Americans that the Irish are alone
responsible.

The State legislature is falling into the hands of the men who
control the city council. They tell a story of a traveller on the
Hudson River Railroad, who, as the train neared Albany — the
capital of New York — said to a somewhat gloomy neighbour,
" Going to the State legislatur' ?" getting for answer, " No, sir !
It's not come to that with me yet. Only to the State prison !"

Americans are never slow to ridicule the denationalization of
New York. They tell you that during the war the colonel of
one of the city regiments said : " I've the best blood of eight
nations in the ranks." " How's that ?" " I've English, Irish,
Welsh, Scotch, French, Italians, Germans." " Guess that's only
seven." " Swedes," suggested some one. " No, no Swedes,"
said the colonel. " Ah ! I have it : I've some Americans."
Stories such as this the rich New Yorkers are nothing loath to
tell ; but they take no steps to check the denationalization they
lament. Instead of entering upon a reform of their municipal
institutions, they affect to despise free government ; instead of
giving, as the oldest New England families have dene, their
tone to the State schools, they keep entirely aloof from school
and State alike. Sending their boys to Oxford, Berlin,
Heidelberg, anywhere rather than to the colleges of their native
land, they leave it to learned pious Boston to supply the West
with teachers, and to keep up Yale and Harvard. Indignant
if they are pointed at as " no Americans," they seem to sepa-
rate themselves from everything that is American : they spend

CHAP. IV.] THE EMPIRE STATE. 33

summers in England, winters in Algeria, springs in Rome, and
Coloradans say with a sneer, " Good New-Yorkers go to Paris
when they die."

Apart from nationality, there is danger to free government
both in the growth of New York city, and in the gigantic
fortunes of New-Yorkers. The income, they tell me, of one of
my merchant friends is larger than the combined salaries of
the President, the Governors, and the whole of the members of
the legislatures of all the forty-five States and territories. As
my informant said, M He could keep the governments of half-a-
dozen States as easily as I can support my half-dozen children."

There is something, no doubt, of the exaggeration of political
jealousy about the accounts of New York vice given in New
England and down South, in the shape of terrible philippics.
It is to be hoped that the over-statement is enormous, for sober
men are to be found even in New York who will tell you that
this city outdoes Paris in every form of profligacy as completely
as the French capital outherods imperial Rome. There is here
no concealment about the matter ; each inhabitant at once
admits the truth of accusations directed against his neighbour.
If the new-men, the "petroleum aristocracy," are second to
none in their denunciations of the Irish, these in their turn
unite with the oldest families in thundering against "Shoddy."

New York life shows but badly in the summer-time; it is
seen at its worst when studied at Saratoga. With ourselves,
men have hardly ceased to run from business and pleasures
worse than toil to the comparative quiet of the country house.
Among New-Yorkers there is not even the affectation of a
search for rest ; the flight is from the drives and restaurants of
New York to the gambling halls of Saratoga; from winning
piles of greenbacks to losing heaps of gold ; from cotton
gambling to roulette or faro. Long Branch is still more vulgar
in its vice ; it is the Margate, Saratoga the Homburg, of
America.

"Shoddy" is blamed beyond what xt deserves when the
follies of New York society are laid in a body at its door. If
it be true that the New York drawing-rooms are the best
guarded in the world, it is also true that entrance is denied as
rigidly to intellect and eminence as to wealth. If exclusiveness

34 GREATER BRITAIN. fCHAP. t».

be needed, affectation can at least do nothing towards sub-
duing " Shoddy." Mere clique-ism, disgusting everywhere, is
ridiculous in a democratic town ; its rules of conduct are as
out of place as kid gloves in the New Zealand bush, or gold
scabbards on a battle-field.

Good meat, and drink, and air give strength to the men and
beauty to the women of a moneyed class ; but in America these
things are the inheritance of every boy and girl, and give their
owners no advantage in the world. During the rebellion, the
ablest generals and bravest soldiers of the North sprang, not
from the merchant families, but from the farmer folk. Without
special merit of some kind, there can be no such thing as aristo-
cracy.

Many American men arid women, who have too little nobility
of soul to be patriots, and too little understanding to see that
theirs is already, in many points, the master country of the
globe, come to you, and bewail the fate which has caused them
to be born citizens of a republic, and dwellers in a country
where men call vices by their names. The least educated of
their countrymen, the only grossly vulgar .class that America
brings forth, they fly to Europe " to escape democracy," and
pass their lives in Paris, Pau, or Nice, living libels on the country
they are believed to represent.

Out of these discordant elements, Cubans, Knickerbockers,
Germans, Irish, " first families," " Petroleum," and " Shoddy,"
we are forced to construct our composite idea — New York.
The Irish numerically predominate, but we have no experience
as to what should be the moral features of an Irish city, for
Dublin has alway been in English hands ; possibly that which
in New York appears to be cosmopolitan is merely Celtic.
However it may be, this much is clear, that the humblest town-
ship of New England reflects more truly the America of the past,
the most chaotic village of Nebraska portrays more fully the
hopes and tendencies of the America of the present, than do
this huge State and city.

If the political figure of New York is not encouraging, its
natural beauty is singularly great. Those who say that America
has no scenery, forget the Hudson, while they can never have
explored Lake George, Lake Champlain, and the Mohawk

. iv.] tffE EMPIRE STATE. #

That Poole's exquisite scene from the " Decameron," " Philo-
mela's Song," could have been realized on earth I never dreamt
until I saw the singers at a New-Yorker's villa on the Hudson
grouped in the deep shades of a glen, from which there was
an outlook upon the basaltic palisades and lake-like Tappan
Zee. It was in some such spot that De Tocqueville wrote the
brightest of his brilliant letters — that dated "Sing Sing" — in
which he speaks of himself as lying on a hill that overhung the
Hudson, watching the white sails gleaming in the hot sun, and
trying in vain to fancy what became of the river where it dis-
appeared in the blue "highlands."

That New York city itself is full of beauty the view from
Castle Garden would suffice to show ; and by night it is not
less lovely than by day. The harbour is illuminated by the
coloured lanterns of a thousand boats, and the steam-whistles
tell of a life that never sleeps. The paddles of the steamers
seem not only to beat the water, but to stir the languid air and
so piovoke a breeze, and the lime-lights at the Fulton and Wall
Street ferries burn so brightly that in the warm glare the eye
reaches through the still night to the feathery acacias in the
streets of Brooklyn. The view is as southern as the people :
we have not yet found America.

0 t

|<5HA1>. V.

CHAPTER V.

CAMBRIDGE COMMENCEMENT.

*OLD CAMBRIDGE! Long may she flourish!" proposed by a
professor in the University of Cambridge, in America, and
drunk standing, with three cheers, by the graduates and under-
graduates of Harvard, is a toast that sets one thinking.

Cambridge in America is not by any means a University of
to-day. Harvard College, which, being the only " house," has
engrossed the privileges, funds, and titles of the University,
was founded at Cambridge, Mass., in 1636, only ninety years
later than the greatest and wealthiest college of our Cambridge
in old England. Puritan Harvard was the sister rather than
the daughter of our own Puritan Emmanuel. Harvard himself,
and Dunster, the first president of Harvard's College, were
among the earliest of the scholars of Emmanuel.

A toast from the Cambridge of new to the Cambridge of old
England is one from younger to elder sister ; and Dr. Wendell
Holmes, " The Autocrat," said as much in proposing it at the
Harvard alumni celebration of 1866.

Like other old institutions, Harvard needs a ten days' revo-
lution : academic abuses flourish as luxuriantly upon American
as on English soil, and University difficulties are much the
same in either country. Here, as at home, the complaint is,
that the men come up to the University untaught. To all of
them their college is forced for a time to play the high-school ;
to some she is never anything more than school. At Harvard
this is worse than with ourselves : the average age of entry,
though of late much risen, is still considerably under eighteen.

The college is now aiming at raising gradually the standard
of entry : when once all are excluded save men, and thinking

CHAP. V.] CAMBRIDGE COMMENCEMENT. 37

men, real students, such as those by whom some of the new
Western Universities are attended, then Harvard hopes to leave
drill-teaching entirely to the schools, and to permit the widest
freedom in the choice of studies to her students.

Harvard is not blameless in this matter. Like other Univer-
sities, she is conservative of bad things as well as good ; indeed,
ten minutes within her walls would suffice to convince even an
Englishman that Harvard clings to the times before the Revo-
lution.

Her conservatism is shown in many trivial things — in the
dress of her janitors, in the cut of the grass-plots and college
gates, in the conduct of the Commencement orations in the
chapel. For the dainty little dames from Boston who came to
hear their friends and brothers recite their disquisitions, none
but Latin programmes were provided ; and the poor ladies were
condemned to find such names as Bush, Maurice, Benjamin,
Humphrey, and Underwood among the graduating youths,
distorted into Bvsh, Mavritivs, Beniamin, Hvmphredvs, Vnder-
wood.

This conservatism of the New England Universities had just
received a sharp attack. In the Commencement oration, Dr.
Hedges, one of the leaders of the Unitarian Church, had
strongly pressed the necessity for a complete freedom of study
after entry, a liberty to take up what line the student would, to
be examined and to graduate in what he chose. He had
instanced the success of Michigan University consequent upon
the adoption of this plan ; he had pointed to the fact that of
all the Universities in America, Michigan alone drew her
students from every State. President Hill and ex-President
Walker had endorsed his views.

There is a special fitness in the reformers coming forward at
this time. This year is the commencement of a new era at
Harvard ; for at the request of the college staff, the connexion
of the University with the commonwealth of Massachusetts
has just been dissolved, and the members of the Board of
overseers are in future to be elected by the University, instead
of being nominated by the State. This being so, the question
had been raised as to whether the Governor would come in
state to Commencement, but he yielded to the wishes of the

{8 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. v.

graduates, and came with the traditional pomp, attended by a
staff in uniform, and escorted by a troop of Volunteer Lancers,
whose scarlet coats and Polish caps recalled the times before
the Revolution.

While the ceremony was still in progress, I had been intro-
duced to several of the foremost rowing men among the
younger graduates of Harvard, and at its conclusion I accom-
panied them to their river. They were in strict training for
their University race with Yale, which was to come off in a
week ; and as Cambridge had been beaten twice running, and
this year had a better crew, they were wishful for criticisms on
their style. Such an opinion as a stranger could offer was soon
given ; they were dashing, fast, long in their stroke ; strong,
considering their light weights, but terribly overworked. They
have taken for a rule the old English notions as to training
which have long since disappeared at home, and, looked upon
as fanatics by their friends and tutors, they have all the fanatic's
excess of zeal.

Rowing and other athletics, with the exceptions of skating
and base-ball, are both neglected and despised in America.
When the smallest sign of a reaction appears in the New Eng-
land colleges, there comes at once a cry from Boston that
brains are being postponed to brawn. If New Englanders
would look about them, they would see that their climate has
of itself developed brains at the expense of brawn, and that,
if national degeneracy is to be long prevented, brawn must in
some way be fostered. The high shoulder, head-voice, and
pallor of the Boston men are not incompatible with the posses-
sion of the most powerful brain, the keenest wit ; but it is not
probable that energy and talent will be continued in future
generations sprung from the worn-out men and women of
to-day.

The prospect at present is not bright; year by year
Americans grow thinner, lighter, and shorter-lived. Elian's
Athenians, we may remember, though they were greatly
superior to the Greeks in stature, were inferior to them in
length of life. The women show even greater signs of weak-
ness than the men, and the high, undulating tones which are
affectation in the French are natural to the ladies of America ;

CHAP, r.] CAMBRIDGE COMMENCEMENT. &

little can be expected of women whose only exercise is excessive
dancing in over-heated rooms.

The American summer, often tropical in its heat, has much
to answer for, but it is the winter which makes the saddest
havoc among the younger people, and the boys and girls at
school. Cooped up all day in the close air of the heated
schoolhouse, the poor children are at night made to run straight
back to the furnace-dried atmosphere of home. The ther-
mometer is commonly raised indoors to 80 degrees Fahr.
The child is not only baked into paleness and sweated bit by
bit to its death, but fed meantime, out of mistaken kindness,
upon the most indigestible of dainties — pastry, hot dough-nuts,
and sweetmeats taking the place of bread, and milk, and
meat — and is not allowed to take the slightest exercise, except
its daily run to school. Who can wonder that spinal diseases
should prevail ?

One reason why Americans are pale and aguish is that, as
a people, they are hewers of primeval forest and tillers of
virgin soil. These are the unhealthiest employments in the
world ; the sun darts down upon the hitherto unreached mould,
and sets free malarious gases, against which the new settlers
have no antidote.

The rowing men of Harvard tell me that their clubs are
still looked on somewhat coldly by a majority of the professors,
who obstinately refuse to see that improved physical type is
not an end, but a means, towards improvement of the mental
faculties, if not in the present, at least in the next generation.
As for the moral training in the virtues of obedience and com-
mand, for which a boat's crew is the best of schools, that is
not yet understood at Harvard, where rowing is confined to the
half-dozen men who are to represent the college in the annual
race, and the three or four more who are being trained to
succeed them in the crew. Rowing in America is what it was
till ten years since at old Cambridge, and is still at Oxford —
not an exercise for the majority of the students, but a pursuit
for a small number. Physical culture is, however, said to be
making some small progress in the older States, and I myself
saw signs of the tendency in Philadelphia. The war has done
some good in this respect, and so has the influx of Canadians

40 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. ?

to Chicago. Cricket is still almost an unknown thing, except
in some few cities. When I was coming in to Baltimore by
train, we passed a meadow in which a match was being played.
A Southerner to whom I was talking at the time, looked at the
players, and said with surprise : " Reckon they've got a
wounded man ther', front o' them sticks, sah." I found that he
meant the batsman, who was wearing pads.

One of the most brilliant of Harvard's thinkers has taken
to carpentry as a relief to his mental toil; her most famed
professor is often to be found working in his garden or his
farm ; but such change of work for work is possible only to
certain men. The generality of Americans need not only
exercise, but relaxation ; still, with less physical, they possess
greater mental vitality than ourselves.

On the day that follows Commencement — the chief ceremony
5f the academic year — is held once in three summers the
" Alumni Celebration," or meeting of the past graduates of
Harvard — a touching gathering always, but peculiarly so in
these times that follow on the losses of the war.

The American college informal organizations rest upon the
unit of the "class." The "class" is what in England is
called "men of the same year " — men who enter together and
graduate together at the end of the regular course. Each class
of a large New England College, such as Harvard, will often
possess an association of its own ; its members will dine to-
gether once in five years or ten — men returning from Europe
and from the Far West to be present at the gathering.

Harvard is strong in the affections of the New England
people — her faults are theirs ; they love her for them, and keep
her advantages to themselves, for in the whole list of graduates
for this year I could find only two Irish names.

Here, at the Alumni Celebration, a procession was marshalled
in the library in which the order was by classes ; the oldest
class of which there were living members being called the first.
"Class of 1797 !" and two old white-haired gentlemen tottered
from the crowd, and started on their march down the central
aisle, arid out bareheaded into the blaze of one of the hottest
days that America had ever known. " Class of 1800 !" missing
two years, in which all the graduates were dead ; and out came

CHAP, v.] CAMBRIDGE COMMENCEMENT. 4l

one, the sole survivor. Then came " 1803," and so on, to the
stalwart company of the present year. When the classes of 1859
and 1860, and of the war-years were called, those who marched
oat showed many an empty sleeve.

The present triennial celebration is noteworthy not only for
the efforts of the University reformers, but also for the founda-
tion of the Memorial Hall dedicated as a monument to those
sons of Harvard who fell while serving their country in the
suppression of the late rebellion. The purity of their patriotism
hardly needed illustration by the fire of young Everett, or the
graceful speech of Dr. Holmes. Even the splendid oratory of
Governor Bullock could do little more than force us to read for
ourselves the Roll of Honour, and see how many of Harvard's
most distinguished younger men died for their country as
privates of Massachusetts Volunteers.

There was a time, as England knows, when the thinking mer
of Boston, and the Cambridge professors, Emerson, Russel
Lowell, Asa Gray, and a dozen more of almost equal fame
morally seceded from their country's councils, and were followed
in their secession by the younger men. " The best men in
America stand aloof from politics," it was said.

The country from which these men seceded was not the
America of to-day : it was the union which South Carolina
ruled. From it the Cambridge professors " came out," not
because they feared to vex their nerves with the shock of public
argument and action, but because the course of the slaveholders
was not their course. Hating the wrongs they saw but could
not remedy, they separated themselves from the wrong-doers ; —
another matter, this, from the " hating hatred " of our culture
class in England.

In 1863 and 1864, there came the reckoning. When America
was first brought to see the things that had been done in her
name, and at her cost, and, rising in her hitherto unknown
strength, struck the noblest blow for freedom that the world has
seen, the men who had been urging on the movement from
without at once re-entered the national ranks, and marched to
victory. Of the men who sat beneath Longfellow, and Agassiz,
and Emerson, whole battalions went forth to war. From Oberlin
almost every male student and professor marched, and the uni-

41 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. v.

versity teaching was left in the women's hands. Out of 8000
school teachers in Pennsylvania, of whom 300 alone were
draughted, 3000 volunteered for the war. Everywhere the
students were foremost among the Volunteers, and from that
time forward America and her thinkers were at one.

The fierce passions of this day of wakening have not been
suffered to disturb the quiet of the academic town. Our Eng-
lish Universities have not about them the classic repose, the air
of study, that belong to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Those who
have seen the lanes of Leyden, and compared them with the
noisy Oxford High Street, will understand what I mean when I
say that our Cambridge comes nearest to her daughter-town ;
but even the English Cambridge has a bustling street or two,
and a weekly market-day, while Cambridge in New England is
one great academic grove, buried in a philosophic calm which
our University towns can never rival so long as men resort to
them for other purposes than work.

It is not only in the Harvard precincts that the oldness of
New England is to be remarked. Although her people are
everywhere in the vanguard of all progress, their country has a
look of gable-ends and steeple-hats, while their laws seem fresh
from the hands of Alfred, In all England there is no city which
has suburbs so grey and venerable as are the elm-shaded towns
round Boston : — Dorchester, Chelsea, Nahant, and Salem, each
seems more ancient than its fellow ; the people speak the Eng-
lish of Elizabeth, and joke about us, " — — speaks good English
for an Englishman."

In the country districts, the winsome villages that nestle in
the dells seem to have been there for ten centuries at least ;
and it gives one a shock to light on such a spot as Bloody
Brook, and to be told that only one hundred and ninety years
ago Captain Lathrop was slain there by Red Indians, with
eighty youths, " the flower of Essex county," as the Puritan
history says.

The warnings of Dr. Hedges, in reference to the strides of
Michigan, have taken the New Englanders by surprise. Secure,
as they believed, in their intellectual supremacy, they forgot
that in a federal union the moral and physical primacy Mall
generally both reside in the same State. The commonwealth

CHAP, v.] CAMBRIDGE COMMENCEMENT. 43

of Massachusetts, at one time the foremost upholder of the
doctrine of State rights, will soon be seen once more acting as
its champion — this time on behalf of herself and her five sister
States.

Were the six New England commonwealths grouped together
in a single State, it would still have only three-fourths of the
population of New York, and about an equal number of inha-
bitants with Pennsylvania. The State of Rhode Island is one-
fourth the size of many a single Californian county. Such facts
as these will not be long lost sight of in the West ; and when a
divergence of interests springs up, Ohio will not suffer her voice
in the senate to continue to be neutralised by that of Connec-
ticut or Rhode Island. Even if the senate be allowed to remain
untouched, it is certain that the redistribution of seats conse-
quent upon the census of 1870 will completely transfer political
power to the central States. That New England will by this
change inevitably lose her hold upon the destinies of the whole
Union is not so clear. The influence for good of New England
upon the West has been chiefly seminal ; but not for that the
less enormous. Go into a State such as Michigan, where half
the people are immigrants — where, of the remaining moiety,
the greater part are born Westerners, and apparently in no
way of New England — and you will find that the inhabitants
are earnest, God-fearing men, with a New England tone of
profound manliness and conviction running through everything
they say and do. The colleges in which they have been reared
are directed, you will find, by New England professors, men
trained in the classic schools of Harvard, Yale, or Amherst;
the ministers under whom they sit are, for the most part, Boston
men ; the books they read are of New England, or old English
of the class from which the writers of the Puritan States them-
selves have drawn their inspiration. To New England is chiefly
due, in short, the making of America a godly nation.

It -is something in this age to come across a people who
believe strongly in anything, and consistently act upon their
beliefs : the New Englanders are such a race. Thoroughly
God-fearing States are not so common that we can afford to
despise them when found ; and nowhere does religion entel
more into daily life than in Vermont or Massachusetts.

44 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. v.

The States of the Union owe so large a debt of gratitude to
New England, that on this score alone they may refrain from
touching her with sacrilegious hands. Not to name her previ-
ous sacrifices, the single little State of Massachusetts — one-fourth
the size of Scotland, and but half as populous as Paris — sent
during the rebellion a hundred and fifty regiments to the field.

It was to Boston that Lincoln telegraphed when, in 1861, at
a minute's notice, he needed men for the defence of Washing-
ton. So entirely were Southerners of the opinion that the New
Englanders were the true supporters of the old flag, that
" Yankee " became a general term for loyalists of any State.
America can never forget the steady heroism of New England
during the great struggle for national existence.

The unity that has been the chief cause of the strength of
the New England influence is in some measure sprung from
the fact that these six States are completely shut off from all
America by the single State of New York, alien from them in
political and moral life. Every Yankee feels his country
bounded by the British, the Irish, and the sea.

In addition to the homogeneousness of isolation, the New
Englanders, like the Northern Scotch, have the advantages of a
bad climate and a miserable soil. These have been the true
agents in the development of the energy, the skill, and fortitude
of the Yankee people. In the war, for instance, it was plain
that the children of the poor and rugged North-Eastern States
were not the men to be beaten by the lotus-eaters of Louisiana
when they were doing battle for what they believed to be a
righteous cause.

One effect of the poverty of soil with which New England
is afflicted has been that her sons have wandered from end to
end of the known world, engaging in every trade, and suc-
ceeding in all. Sometimes there is in their migrations a re-
ligious side. Mormonism, although it now draws its forces
from Great Britain, was founded in New England. At Brindisi,
on my way home, I met three Yankees returning from a Maine
colony lately founded at Jaffa, in expectation of the fulfilment
of prophecy, and destruction of the Mohamedan rule. For the
moment they are intriguing for a firman from the very Govern-
ment upon the coming fall of which all their expectations hav«

«Ut». V.] CAM&&IDGE COMMENCEMENT. 4|

been based ; and these fierce fanatics are making money by
managing an hotel. One of them told me that the Jaffa
colony is a " religio-commercial speculation."

New England Yankees are not always so filled with the
Puritan spirit as to reject unlawful means of money-making.
Even the Massachusetts common schools and prim Connecticut
meeting-houses turn out their black sheep into the world. At
Centre Harbour, in New Hampshire, I met with an example of
the " Yankee spawn " in a Maine man — a shrewd, sailor-looking
fellow. He was sitting next me at the ordinary, and asked me
to take a glass of his champagne. I declined, but chatted, and
let out that I was English.

" I was subject to your Government once for sixteen months,"
my neighbour said.

" Really ! Where ?"

" Sierra Leone. I was a prisoner there. And very lucky
too."

"Why so?" I asked.

" Because, if the American Government had caught me, they
would have hanged me for a pirate. But / wasn't a pirate."

With over great energy I struck in, " Of course not."

My Neighbour — "No; I was a slaver"

Idling among the hills of New Hampshire and the lakes of
Maine, it is impossible for a stranger starting free from pre-
judice, not to end by loving the pious people of New England,
for he will see that there could be no severer blow to the cause
of freedom throughout the world than the loss by them of an
influence upon American life and thought which has been one
of unmixed good, Still, New England is not America.

46 GREATER BRITAIN. (G&J&.

CHAPTER VI.
CANADA.

THERE is not in the world a nobler outlook than that from off
the terrace at Quebec. You stand upon a rock overhanging
city and river, and look down upon the guardship's masts.
Acre upon acre of timber comes floating down the stream
above the city, the Canadian songs just reaching you upon the
heights ; and beneath you are fleets of great ships, English,
German, French, and Dutch, embarking the timber from the
floating-docks. The Stars and Stripes are nowhere to be seen.
Such are the distances in North America, that here, farther
from the sea thar. is any city in Europe west of Moscow, we
have a seaport town, with gunboats and three-decker ; morning
and evening guns, and bars of " God save the Queen," to mark
the opening and closing of the port.

The St. Lawrence runs in a chasm in aflat table-land, through
which some earlier Niagara seems to have cut for it a way. Some
of the tributaries are in sight, all falling from a cliff into the
deep still river. In the distance, seawards, a silver ribbon on
the rock represents the falls of Montmorenci. Long villages
of white tiny cots straggle along the roads that radiate from the
city ; the great black cross of the French parish church showing
reverently from all.

On the north, the eye ranges to the rugged outlines of the
Laurentian chain, composed of the oldest mountains in the
world, at the foot of which is Lake St. Charles, full of fiord-like
northern beauty, where at a later time I learnt to paddle the
Indian canoe of birch bark.

Leaving the citadel, we are at once in the European middle
ages. Gates and posterns, cranky steps that lead up to lofty

OLU». Vi.] CANADA. 47

gabled houses with sharp French roofs of burnished tin, like
those of Liege; processions of the Host; altars decked with
flowers ; statues of the Virgin ; sabots ; blouses ; and the
scarlet of the British linesman — all these are seen in narrow
streets and markets, that are graced with many a Cotentin lace
cap, and all within forty miles of the down-east Yankee State
of Maine. It is not far from New England to old France.

Quebec Lower Town is very like St. Peter Port in Guernsey.
Norman-French inhabitants, guarded by British troops, step-
built streets, thronged fruit-market, and citadel upon a rock,
frowning down upon the quays, are alike in each. A slight
knowledge of the Upper Normandy patois is not without its
use ; it procured me an offer of a pinch of snuff from an old
habitante on board one of the river boats. Her gesture was
worthy of the ancien regime.

There has been no dying-out of the race among the French
Canadians. They number twenty times the thousands that
they did a hundred years ago. The American soil has left
their physical type, religion, language, laws, and habits abso-
lutely untouched. They herd together in their rambling vil-
lages, dance to the fiddle after mass on Sundays, as gaily as
once did their Norman sires, and keep up the fleur-de-lys and
the memory of Montcalm. More French than the French are
the Lower Canadian habitants.

Not only here, but everywhere, a French "dependency" is
France transported ; not a double of the France of to-day, but
a mummy of the France of the time of the " colony's " founda-
tion. In Saigon, you find Imperial France ; here the France
Df Louis Quatorze. The Englishman founds everywhere a New
England — new in thought as in soil ; the Frenchman carries
with him to California, to Japan, an undying recollection of the
Palais Royal. In San Francisco there lives* a great French
capitalist, who, since 1849, has been the originator of every
successful Californian speculation. He cannot speak a word of
English, and his greatest pleasure, in a country of fruits and wine
is to bid his old French servant assure him, upon honour, that
his whole dessert, from his claret to his olives, has been brought
for him from France. There is much in the colonizing instinct
of our race, but something, perhaps, in the consideration that

• Nov. (1884) deceased

4« GREATER BRITAIN. fau?. tl.

the English exiles were hardly happy enough at home to be
always looking back to what they have left in the old country.

There is about this old France something of Dutch sleepiness
and content. There is, indeed, some bustle in the market-
place, where the grand old dames in snowy caps sit selling
plums and pears ; there is much singing made over the lading of
the timber ships ; there are rafts in hundreds gliding down the
river; old French carts in dozens, creaking and wheezing on
their lumbering way to town, with much clacking of whips and
clappering of wooden shoes. All these things there are, but
then there are these and more in Dol, and Quimper, and
Morlaix — in all those towns which in Europe come nearest to
old France. There is quiet bustle, subdued trade, prosperity
deep, not noisy ; but the life is sleepy ; the rafts float, and are
not tugged nor rowed ; the old Norman horses seem to draw
the still older carts without an effort, and the very boys wear
noisy shoes against their will, and make a clatter simply because
they cannot help it.

In such a scene it is impossible to forget that British troops
are here employed as guardians of the only true French colony
in the world against the inroads of the English race. " Nos
•nstitutions, notre langue, nos lois," is the motto of the habitants,
Their newspapers are filled with church celebrations, village
fetes, " speech of M. le Cure at the harvest home," announce-
ments by the " scherif," " address of M. Carder at the conse-
cration of Monseigneur Laroque," blessings of bells, of ships ;
but of life, nothing — of mention of what is passing in America,
not a word. One corner is given to the world outside America :
" Emprunt Pontifical, Emission Americaine, quatre millions de
piastres," heads a solid column of holy finance. The pulse-
beat of the Continent finds no echo here.

It is not only in political affairs that there is a want of energy
in French or Lower Canada : in journeying from Portland to
Quebec, the moment the frontier was passed, we seemed to
have come from a land of life to one of death. No more bust-
ling villages, no more keen-eyed farmers : a fog of unenterprise
hung over the land ; roads were wanting, houses rude, swamps
undrained, fields unweeded, plains untilled.

If the Eastern Townships are a wilderness, they are not a

CRAP. vi.J CANADA. 49

desert. The country on the Saguenay is both. At Quebec
in summer it is hot — mosquitoes are not unknown : even at
Tadousac, where the Saguenay flows into the St. Lawrence,
there is sunlight as strong as that of Paris. Once in the
northern river, all is cold, gloomy, arctic — no house, no boat,;
no sign of man's existence, no beasts, no birds, although the
St. Lawrence swarms with ducks and loons. The river is a
straight, cold, black fiord, walled-in by tremendous cliffs, which
go sheer down into depths to which their height above water is
as nothing ; two walls of rock, and a path of ice-cold, inky
water. Fish there are, seal and salmon — that is all. The
" whales and porpoises," which are advertised by the Tadousac
folk as certain to " disport themselves daily in front of the
hotel," are never to be seen in this earth-crack of the Saguenay.

The cold for summer was intense ; nowhere in the world
does the limit of ever-frozen ground come so far south as in
the longitude of the Saguenay. At night we had a wonderful
display of northern lights. A white column, towering to the
mid-skies, rose, died away, and was succeeded by broad white
clouds, stretching from east to west, and sending streamers
northwards. Suddenly there shot up three fresh silvery columns
in the north, north-west, and north-east, on which all the
colours of the rainbow danced and played. After moonrise,
the whole seemed gradually to fade away.

At Ha Ha Bay, the head of navigation, I found a fur-buying
station of the Hudson Bay Company ; but that association has
enough to answer for without being charged with the desolation
of the Saguenay. The company has not here, as upon the
Red River, sacrificed colonists to minks and silver-foxes.
There is something more blighting than a monopoly that op-
presses Lower Canada. As I returned to Quebec, the boat
that I was aboard touched at St. Paschal, now called Riviere
du Loup, the St. Lawrence terminus of the Grand Trunk Line :
we found there immense wharves, and plenty of bells and
crosses, but not a single ship, great or small. Even in Virginia
I had seen nothing more disheartening.

North of the St. Lawrence, religion is made to play as active
a part in politics as in the landscape. Lower Canada, as we
have seen, is French and Catholic ; Upper Canada is Scotch

50 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. n.

and Presbyterian, though the Episcopalians are strong in wealth
and the Irish Catholics in numbers.

Had the Catholics been united, they might, since the fusion
of the two Canadas, have governed the whole country : as it is,
the Irish and French neither worship nor vote together, and of
late the Scotch have had nearly their own way.

Finding themselves steadily losing ground, the French threw in
their lot with the scheme for the confederation of the provinces,
and their clergy took up the cause with a zeal which they justi-
fied to their flocks by pointing out that the alternative was annex-
ation to America, and possible confiscation of the Church lands.

Confederation of the provinces means separation of the
Canadas, which 'regain each its Parliament ; and the French
Catholics begin to hope that the Irish of Upper Canada, now
that they are less completely overshadowed by the more nu-
merous French, will again act with their co-religionists : the
Catholic vote in the new confederation will be nearly half the
whole. In Toronto, however, the Fenians are strong, and even
in Montreal their presence is not unknown : it is a question
whether the whole of the Canadian Irish are not disaffected.
The Irish of the chief city have their Irish priests, their Cathe-
dral of St. Patrick, while the French have theirs upon the
Place d'Armes. The want of union may save the dominion
from the establishment of Catholicism as a State Church.

The confederation of our provinces was necessary, if British
North America was to have a chance for life ; but it cannot be
olid to be accomplished while British Columbia and the Red
River tract are not included.* To give Canada an outlet on
one side is something, but communication with the Atlantic is
a small matter by the side of communication at once with
Atlantic and Pacific through British territory. We shall soon
have railways from Halifax to Lake Superior, and thence to
the Pacific is but 1600 miles. It is true that the line is far
north, and exposed to heavy snows and bitter cold ; but, on
the other hand, it is well supplied with wood, and if it possess
no such fertile tracts as that of Kansas, it at least escapes the
frightful wilds of Bitter Creek and Mirage Plains.

We are now evea left in doubt how long we shall continue
• Now done. Other statements in Chap. VI. have become untrue.

CHAP. vi. J CANADA. $i

to have so much as a route across the continent on paper.
Since the cession of Russian America to the United States, a
map of North America has been published in which the name
of the Great Republic sprawls across the continent from Behring
Straits to Mexico, with the " E " in " United " ominously near
Vancouver Island, and the " T " actually planted upon British
territory. If we take up the British Columbian, we find the
citizens of the main-land portion of the province proposing to
sell the island for twenty million dollars to the States.

Settled chiefly by Americans from Oregon and California,
and situated, for purposes of reinforcement, immigration, and
supply, at a distance of not less than twenty thousand miles
from home, the British Pacific colonies can hardly be considered
strong in their allegiance to the Crown : we have here the re-
ductio ad absurdum of home government.

Our hindering trade by tolerating the presence of two sets ot
custom-houses, and two sets of coins between Halifax and Lake
Superior, was less absurd than our altogether preventing its ex-
tension now. Under a so-called confederation of our American
possessions, we have left a country the size of civilized Europe,
and nearly as large as the United States — lying, too, upon the
track of commerce and high road to China — to be despotically
governed by a company of traders in skins and peltries, and to
remain as long as it so pleases them in the dead stillness and
desertion needed to ensure the presence of fur-bearing beasts.

" Red River " should be a second Minnesota, Halifax a
second Liverpool, Esquimault a second San Francisco ; but
double government has done its work, and the outposts of the
line of trade are already in American, not British hands. The
gold mines of Nova Scotia, the coal mines and forests of British
Columbia, are owned in New England and New York, and the
Californians are expecting the proclamation of an American
territorial government in the capital of Vancouver Island.

As Montana becomes peopled up, we shall hear of the " co-
lonization " of Red River by citizens of the United States, such
as preceded the hoisting of the " lone star " in Texas, and the
" bear flag " in California, by Fremont ; and resistance by the
Hudson Bay Company will neither be possible, nor, in the in-
f crests of civilization, desirable.

E 2

5 a GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. n.

Even supposing a great popular awakening upon Colonial
questions, and the destruction of the Hudson Bay monopoly,
we could never make the Canadian dominion strong. With
the addition of Columbia and Red River, British America
would hardly be as powerful or populous as the two north-
western states of Ohio and Illinois, or the single state of New
York — one out of forty-five. " Help us for ten years, and then
we'll help ourselves," the Canadians say ; " help us to become
ten millions, and then we will stand alone ;" but this becoming
ten millions is not such an easy thing.

The ideas of most of us as to the size of the British territories
are derived from maps of North America, made upon Merca-
tor's projection, which are grossly out in high latitudes, though
correct at the equator. The Canadas are made to appear at
least twice their proper size, and such gigantic proportions are
given to the northern parts of the Hudson territory that we are
tempted to believe that in a country so vast there must be some
little value. The true size is no more shown upon the map
than is the nine-months' winter.

To Upper Canada, which is no bad country, it is not for lack
of asking that population fails to come. Admirably-executed
gazettes give the fullest information about the British posses-
sions in the most glowing of terms ; offices and agencies are
established in Liverpool, London, Cork, Londonderry, and a
dozen other cities ; Government immigration agents and infor-
mation-offices are to be found in every town in Canada ; the
Government emigrant is looked after in health, comfort, and
religion ; directions of the fullest kind are given him in the
matters of money, clothes, tools, baggage ; Canada, he is told
by the Government papers, possesses perfect religious, political,
and social freedom ; British subjects step at once into the exer-
cise of political rights ; the winter is but bracing, the climate
the healthiest in the world. Millions of acres of surveyed
Crown lands are continually in the market. To one who
knows what the northern forests are, there is perhaps something
of satire in the statement that " thero is generally on Crown
lands an unlimited supply of the best fuel." What of that,
however ? The intending emigrant knows nothing of the
struggle with the woods, and fuel is fuel in Old England. The

CHAP. Vl/J CANADA. 5)

mining of the precious metals, the fisheries, petroleum, all are
open to the settler — let him but come. Reading these docu-
ments, we can only rub our eyes, and wonder how it is that
human selfishness allows the Canadian officials to disclose the
wonders of their El Dorado to the outer world, and invite all
men to share blessings which we should have expected them to
keep as a close preserve for themselves and their nearest and
dearest friends. Taxation in the States, the immigrants are
told, is five and a half times what it is in Canada, two and a
half times the English rate. Labourers by the thousand, mer-
chants and farmers by the score, are said to be flocking into
Canada to avoid the taxation of the Radicals. The average
duration of life in Canada is 37 per cent, higher than in the
States. Yet, in the face of all these facts, only twenty or two
and twenty thousand immigrants come to Canada for three
hundred thousand that flock annually to the States, and of the
former many thousands do but pass through on their way to
the Great West. Of the twenty thousand who land at Quebec
in each year, but four and a half thousand remain a year in
Canada ; and there are a quarter of a million of persons born
in British America now naturalized in the United States.

The passage of the immigrants to the Western States is not
for want of warning. The Canadian Government advertise
every Coloradan duel, every lynching in Montana, every Oppo-
sition speech in Kansas, by way of teaching the immigrants to
respect the country of which they are about to become free
citizens.

It is an unfortunate fact that these strange statements are not
harmless — not harmless to Canada, I mean. The Provincial
Government by these publications seems to confess to the
world that Canada can live only by running down the great
republic. Canadian sympathy for the rebellion tends to make
us think that these Northern statesmen must not only share in
our old-world confusion of the notions of right and wrong, but
must be sadly short-sighted into the bargain. It is only by
their position that they are blinded, for few countries have
abler men than Sir James Macdonald, or sounder statesmen
than Cartier or Gait ; but, like men standing on the edge of a
cliff, Canadian statesmen are always wanting to jump off. Had

54 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. vi.

Great Bntian left them to their own devices, we should have
had war with America in the spring of 1866.

The position of Canada is in many ways anomalous : of the
two chief sections of our race — that in Britain and that in
America — the latter is again split in twain, and one division
governed from across the Atlantic. For such government there
is no pretext, except the wishes of the governed, who by the
connexion gain men for their defence, and the opportunity of
gratifying their spite for their neighbours at our expense.
Those who ask why a connexion so one-sided, so opposed to
the best interests of our race, should be suffered to continue,
are answered, now that the argument of " prestige " is given up,
that the Canadians are loyal, and that they hate the Americans,
to whom, were it not for us, they must inevitably fall. That
the Canadians hate the Americans can be no reason why we
should spend blood and treasure in protecting them against the
consequences of their hate. The world should have passed the
time when local dislikes can be suffered to affect our policy
towards the other sections of our race ; but even were it other-
wise, it is hard to see how twelve thousand British troops, or a
royal standard hoisted at Ottawa, can protect a frontier of two
thousand miles in length from a nation of five and thirty
millions. Canada, perhaps, can defend herself, but we most
certainly cannot defend her : we provoke much more than we
assist.

As for Canadian " loyalty," it appears to consist largely of
hatred towards America, for while we were fighting China and
conquering Japan, that we might spread free trade, our loyal
colonists of Canada set upon our goods protective duties of
20 per cent., which they have now in some degree removed onry
that they may get into their hands the smuggling trade carried
on in breach of the laws of our ally, their neighbour. We.
might, at least, fairly insist that the connexion should cease,
unless Canada will remove her duties.

At bottom it would seem as though no one gained by the
retention of our hold on Canada. Were she independent, her
borders would never again be wasted by Fenian hordes, and
she would escape the terrible danger of being the battle-field in
which European quarrels are fought out. Canada once repub

CHAP, vi.] CANADA. H

lican, the Monroe doctrine would be satisfied, and its most
violent partisans would cease to advocate the adoption of other
than moral means to merge her territories in the Union. An
independent Canada would not long delay the railway across
the continent to Puget Sound, which a British bureau calls im-
possible. England would be relieved from the fear of a certain
defeat by America in the event of war — a fear always harmful,
even when war seems most unlikely ; — relieved, too, from the
cost of such panics as those of 1861 and 1866.

Did Canada stand alone, no offence that she could give
America would be likely to unite all sections of that country in
an attempt to conquer her ; while, on the other hand, such an
attempt would be resisted to the death by an armed and brave
people, four millions strong. As it is, any offence towards
America committed by our agents, at any place or time, or
arising out of the continual changes of policy and of ministry in
Great Britain, united to the standing offence of maintainkig the
monarchical principle in North America, will bring upon un-
happy Canada the whole American nation, indignant in sonic
cause, just, or seeming just, and to be met by a people deceived
into putting their trust in a few regiments of British troops,
sufficient at the most to hold Quebec, and to be backed by
reinforcements which could never come in time, did public
opinion in Great Britain so much as permit their sailing. In
all history there is nothing stranger than the narrowness 01
mind that has led us to see in Canada a piece of England, and
in America a hostile country. There are more sons of British
subjects in America than in Canada, by far ; and the American
looks upon the old country with a pride that cannot be shared
by a man who looks to her to pay his soldiers.

The independence of Canada would put an immediate end
to much of the American jealousy of Great Britain — a con-
sideration which of itself should outweigh any claim to protec-
tion which the Canadians can have. The position which we
have to set before us in our external dealings is, that we are
no more fellow-countrymen of the Canadians than of the
Americans of the North or West

The capital of the new dominion is to be Ottawa, known
as " Hole in the Woods " among the friends of Toronto and

56 GREATER BRITAIN: TCHAP. vi.

Montreal, and once called Bytown. It consists of the huge Par-
liament House, the Government printing-office, some houseless
wildernesses meant for streets, and the hotel where the members
of the Legislature "board." Such was the senatorial throng at
the moment of my visit, that we were thrust into a detached
building made of half-inch planks, with wide openings between
the boards ; and as the French Canadian members were ex-
cited about the resignation of Mr. Gait, indescribable chattering
and bawling filled the house.

The view from the Parliament House is even more thoroughly
Canadian than that from the terrace at Quebec — a view of a
land of rapids, of pine forests, and of lumberers' homes, full of
character, but somewhat bleak and dreary ; even on the hottest
summer's day, it tells of winter storms past and to come. On
the far left are the island-filled reaches of the Upper Ottawa :
nearer, the roaring Chaudiere Falls, a mile across — a mile of
walls of water, of sudden shoots, of jets, of spray. From the
" cauldron " itself, into which we can hardly see, rises a column
of rainbow-tinted mist, backed by distant ranges and black
woods, now fast falling before the settler's axe. Below you is
the river, swift, and covered with cream-like foam ; on the right,
a gorge — the mouth of the Rideau Canal.

When surveyed from the fittest points, the Chaudiere is but
little behind Niagara ; but it may be doubted whether in any
fall there is that which can be called sublimity. Natural causes
are too evident : water, rushing to find its level, falls from a
ledge of rock. How different from a storm upon the coast, or
from a September sunset, where the natural causes are so
remote that you can bring yourself almost to see the immediate
hand of God. It is excusable in Americans, who have no sea-
coast worthy of the name, to talk of Niagara as the perfection
of the sublime ; but it is strange that a people who have Birling
Gap and Bantry Bay should allow themselves to be led by such
a cry.

Niagara has one beauty in which it is unapproached by the
great Chaudiere : the awesome slowness with which the deep-
green flood, in the centre of the Horseshoe Fall, rolls rathei
than plunges into the gulf.

CHAPTER VII.

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN.

FROM the gloom of Buffalo, the smoke of Cincinnati, and the
dirt of Pittsburg, I should have been glad to escape as soon as
might be, even had not the death from cholera of 240 persons
in a single day of my visit to the " Queen City " warned me to
fly north. From a stricken town, with its gutters full of chloride
of lime, and fires burning in the public streets, to green Michi-
gan, was a grateful change ; but I was full of sorrow at leaving
that richest and most lovely of all States — Ohio. There is a
charm in the park-like beauty of the Monongahela valley,
dotted with vines and orchards, that nothing in Eastern America
can rival. The absence at once of stumps in the corn-fields,
and of untilled or unfenced land, gives the " buckeye State " a
look of age that none of the " old Eastern States " can show.
In corn, in meadow, in timber-land, Ohio stands alone. Her
Indian corn exceeds in richness that of any other State ; she
has ample stores of iron, and coal is worked upon the surface
in every Alleghany valley. Wool, wine, hops, tobacco, all are
raised ; her Catawba has inspired poems. Every river side is
clothed with groves of oak, of hickory, of sugar-maple, of syca-
more, of poplar, and of buckeye. Yet, as I said, the change to
the Michigan prairie was full of a delightful relief; it was Hol-
.and after the Rhine, London after Paris.

Where men grow tall there will maize grow tall, is a good
sound rule : limestone makes both bone and straw. The
North-western States, inhabited by giant men, are the chosen
home of the most useful and beautiful of plants, the maize — in
America called "corn." For hundreds of miles the railway
track, protected not even by a fence or hedge, runs through the
towering plants, which hide all prospect save that of their own

$8 GREATER BRIT AT f, [CHAP. vn.

green pyramids. Maize feeds the people, it feeds the cattle
and the hogs that they export to feed the cities of the East ;
from it is made yearly, as an Ohio farmer told me, " whisky
enough to float the ark." Rice is not more the support of the
Chinese than maize of the English in America.

In the great corn-field of the North-western States dwells a
people without a history, without tradition, busy at hewing out
of the forest-trunks codes and social usages of its own. The
Kansas men have set themselves to emancipating women ; the
" Wolverines," as the people of Michigan are called, have
turned their heads to education, and are teaching the teachers
upon this point.

The rapidity with which intellectual activity is awakened in
the West is inexplicable to the people of New England.
While you are admiring the laws of Minnesota and Wisconsin,
Boston men tell you that the resemblance of the code of Kansas
to that of Connecticut is consequent only on the fact, that the
framers of the former possessed a copy of this one New England
code, while they had never set eyes upon the code of any other
country in the world. While Yale and Harvard are trying in vain
to keep pace with the State universities of Michigan and Kansas,
you will meet in Lowell and New Haven men who apply an
old Russian story to the Western colleges, and tell you that their
professors of languages, when asked where they have studied,
reply that they guess they learned to read and write in Springfield.

One of the difficulties of the New England colleges has been
to reconcile university traditions with democracy ; but in the
Western States there is neither reconciliation nor tradition,
though Universities are plenty. Probably the most democratic
school in the whole world is the State University of Michigan,
situate at Ann Arbor, near Detroit. It is cheap, large, prac-
tical ; twelve hundred students, paying only the ten dollars'
entrance fee, and five dollars a year during residence, and living
where they can in the little town, attend the university to be
prepared to enter with knowledge and resolution upon the
affairs of their future life. A few only are educated by having
their minds unfolded that they may become many-sided men ;
but all work with spirit, and with that earnestness which is seen
in the Scotch universities at home. The war with crime, the

CHAP. vit.J UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN. 59

war with sin, the war with death — Law, Theology, Medicine —
these are the three foremost of man's employments ; to these,
accordingly, the University affords her chiefest care, and to one
of these the student, his entrance examination passed, often
gives his entire time.

These things are democratic, but it is not in them that the
essential democracy of the University is to be seen. There are
at Michigan no honour-lists, no classes in our sense, no orders
of merit, no competition. A man takes, or does not take, a
certain degree. The University is governed, not by its mem-
bers, not by its professors, but by a parliament of " regents "
appointed by the inhabitants of the State. Such are the two
great principles of the democratic University of the West.

It might be supposed that these two strange departures
from the systems of older universities were irregularities, in-
troduced to meet the temporary embarrassments incidental to
educational establishments in young States. So far is this
from being the case, that, as I saw at Cambridge, the clearest-
sighted men of the older colleges of America are trying to
assimilate their teaching system to that of Michigan — at least,
in the one point of the absence of competition. They assert
that toil performed under the excitement of a fierce struggle
between man and man is unhealthy work, different in nature
and in results from the loving labour of men whose hearts are
really in what they do : toil, in short, not very easily distin-
guishable from slave-labour.

In the matter of the absence of competition, Michigan is
probably but returning to the system of the European universi-
ties of the Middle Ages, but the government by other than the
members of the University is a still stranger scheme. It is
explained when we look to the source whence the funds of the
University are drawn — namely, from the pockets of the tax-
payers of the State. The men who have set up this corporation
in their midst, and who tax themselves for its support, cannot
be called on, they say, to renounce its government to their
nominees, Professors from New England, unconnected with the
State, men of one idea, often quarrelsome, sometimes " irreli-
gious." There is much truth in these statements of the case,
but it is to be hoped that the men chosen to serve as " regents

60 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. Ttt,

are of a higher intellectual stamp than those appointed to edu-
cational offices in the Canadian backwoods. A report was put
into my hands at Ottawa, in which a Superintendent of Instruc-
tion writes to the Minister of Education, that he had advised
the ratepayers of Victoria county not in future to elect as school
trustees men who cannot read or write. As Michigan grows
older, she will, perhaps, seek to conform to the practice of
other universities in this matter of her government, but in the
point of absence of competition she is likely to continue firm.

Even here some difficulty is found in getting competent
school directors; one of them reported 31^ children attending
school. Of another district its superintendent writes : —
" Conduct of scholars about the same as that of ' Young
America' in general." Some of the superintendents aim at
jocosity, and show no want of talent in themselves, while their
efforts are to demonstrate its deficiency among the boys. The
superintendent of Grattan says, in answer to some numbered
questions : — " Condition good, improvement fair ; for ^ of ^ of
the year in school, and fifteen-sixteenths of the time at play.
Male teachers most successful with the birch; female, with
Cupid's darts. School-houses in fair whittling order. Appa-
ratus : — Shovel, none ; tongs, ditto ; poker, one. Conduct of
scholars like that of parents — good, bad, and indifferent. No
minister in town — sorry ; no lawyer — good !" The superin-
tendents of Manlius township report that Districts i and 2
have buildings " fit (in winter) only for the polar bear, walrus,
reindeer, Russian sable, or Siberian bat ;" and they go on to
say, " Our children read everything, from Mr. Noodle's Essays
on Matrimony to Artemus Ward's Lecture on First Principles
of American Government." Another report from a very new
county runs : — " Sunday-schools afford a little reading-matter
to the children. Character of matter most read — battle,
murder, and sudden death." A third states that the teachers
are meanly paid, and goes on : — " If the teaching is no better
than the pay, it must be like the soup that the rebels gave the
prisoners." A superintendent, reporting that the success of
the teachers is greater than their qualifications warrant, says : —
"The reason is to be found in the Yankeeish adaptability of
even Wolverines."

CHAP, vii.] UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN. 61

After all, it is hard to pass jokes at the expense of the
North-western people. A population who could maintain
schools and universities under difficulties apparently over-
whelming was the source from which to draw Union Volunteers
such as those who, after the war, returned to their Northern
homes, I have been told, shocked and astonished at the igno-
rance and debasement of the Southern whites.

The system of elective studies pursued at Michigan is one
to which we are year by year tending in the English univer-
sities. As sciences multiply and deepen, it becomes more and
more impossible that a " general course " scheme can produce
men fit to take their places in the world. Cambridge has
attempted to set up both systems, and, giving her students the
choice, bids them pursue one branch of study with a view to
honours, or take a less-valued degree requiring some slight
proficiency in many things. Michigan denies that the stimulus
of honour examinations should be connected with the elective
system. With her, men first graduate in science, or in an arts
degree, which bears a close resemblance to the English " poll,"
and then pursue their elected study in a course which leads to
no university distinction, and which is free from the struggle
for place and honours. The objections to "honours" rest
upon a more solid foundation than a mere democratic hatred
of inequality of man and man. Repute as a writer, as a
practitioner, is valued by the Ann Arbor man, and the Wol-
verines do not follow the Ephesians, and tell men who excel
among them to go and excel elsewhere. The Michigan Pro-
fessors say, and Dr. Hedges bears them out, that a far higher
average of real knowledge is obtained under this system of
independent work than is dreamt of in colleges where com-
petition rules. "A higher average" is all they say, and they
acknowledge frankly that there is here and there a student to
be found to whom competition would do good. As a rule,
they tell us, this is not the case. Unlimited battle between
man and man for place is sufficiently the bane of the world not
to be made the curse of schools. Competition breeds every
evil which it is the aim of education, the duty of a university,
to suppress : pale faces caused by excessive toil, feverish ex-
citement that prevents true work, a hatred of the subject on

6i GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. m.

which the toil is spent, jealousy of best friends, systematic
depreciation of men's talents, rejection of all reading that will
not " pay," extreme and unhealthy cultivation of the memory,
general degradation of labour — all these evils, and many more,
are charged upon the system. Everything that our Professors
have to say of " cram " these American thinkers apply to com-
petition. Strange doctrines these for Young America !

Of the practical turn which we should naturally expect to
discover in the University of a brand-new State I found evidence
in the regulation which prescribes that the degree of Master of
Arts shall not be conferred as a matter of course upon graduates
of three years' standing, but only upon such as have pursued
professional or general scientific studies during that period.
Even in these cases an examination before some one of the
faculties is required for the Master's degree. I was told that
for the Medical degree " four years of reputable practice" is
received instead of certain courses.

In her special and selected studies, Michigan is as merely
practical as Swift's University of Brobdignag; but, standing
far above the ordinary arts or science courses, there is a
" University course " designed for those who have already taken
the Bachelor's degree. It is harder to say what this course
includes than what it does not. The twenty heads range over
philology, philosophy, art, and science ; there is a branch of
" criticism," one of " arts of design," one of " fine arts." Astro-
nomy, ethics, and Oriental languages are all embraced in a
scheme brought into working order within ten years of the
time when Michigan was a wilderness, and the college-yard an
Indian hunting-ground.

Michigan entered upon education-work very early in her
history as a State. In 1850, her legislature commissioned the
Hon. Ira Mayhew to prepare a work on education for circula-
tion throughout America. Her progress has been as rapid as
her start was good; her natural history collection is already
one of the best in America ; her medical school is almost un
equalled, and students flow to her even from New England
and from California, while from New York she draws a hundred
men a year. In only one point is Ann Arbor anywhere but in
the van : she has hitherto followed the New England college?

OTAT-. vn.J UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN. Sj

in excluding women from her degrees. The SteJ. e University of
Kansas has not shown the same exclusiveness that has charac-
terised the conduct of the rulers of Michigan : women are ad-
mitted not only to the classes, but to the professorships at
Lawrence.

This North-western institution at Ann Arbor was not behind
even Harvard in the war : it supplied the Union army with
1000 men. The i;th regiment of Michigan Volunteers, mainly
composed of teachers and Ann Arbor students, has no cause to
fear the rivalry of any other " record ;" and such was the effect
of the war, that in 1860 there were in Michigan 2600 male to
5350 female teachers, whereas now there are but 1300 men to
7500 women.

So proud are Michigan men of their roll of honour, that
they publish it at full length in the calendar of the University.
Every " class " from the foundation of the schools shows some
graduates distinguished in their country's service during the
suppression of the rebellion. The Hon. Oramel Hosford,
Superintendent of Public Instruction in Michigan, reports that,
owing to the presence of crowds of returned soldiers, the schools
of the State are filled almost to the limit of their capacity, while
some are compelled to close their doors against the thronging
crowds. Captains, colonels, generals are among the students
now humbly learning in the Ann Arbor University Schools.

The State of Michigan is peculiar in the form that she has
given to her higher teaching ; but in no way peculiar in the
attention she bestows on education. Teaching, high and low,
is a passion in the West, and each of these young States has
established a University of the highest order, and placed in
every township not only schools, but public libraries, supported
from the rates, and managed by the people.

Not only have the appropriations for educational purposes
by each State been large, but those of the Federal Government
have been upon the most splendid scale. What has been done
in the Eastern and the Central States no man can tell, but ever,
west of the Mississippi twenty-two million acres have already
been granted for such purposes, while fifty-six million more are
set aside for similar gifts.

The Americans are not forgetful of their Puritan traditions.

QREATFR BRITAIN. TCHAP. vm

CHAPTER VIII.
THE PACIFIC RAILROAD.

WHEN the companions of the explorer Cartier found that the
rapids at Montreal were not the end of all navigation, as they had
feared, but that above them there began a second and bound-
less reach of deep, still waters, they fancied they had found the
long-looked-for route to China, and cried, " La Chine !" So the
story goes, and the name has stuck to the place.

Up to 1 86 1, the Canadians remained in the belief that they
were at least the potential possessors of the only possible road
for the China trade of the future, for in that year a Canadian
government paper declared that the Rocky Mountains, south
of British territory, were impassable for railroads. Maps showed
that from St. Louis to San Francisco the distance was twice
that from the head of navigation on Lake Superior to the British
Pacific ports.

America has gone through a five years' agony since that
time; but now, in the first days of peace, we find that the
American Pacific Railroad, growing at the average rate of two
miles a day at one end, and one mile a day at the other, will
stretch from sea to sea in 1869 or 1870, while the British line
remains a dream.

Not only are the mountains passable, but the engineers
have found themselves compelled to decide on the conflicting
claims of passes without number. Wall-like and frowning as
the Rocky Mountains are when seen from the plains, the
rolling gaps are many, and they are easier crossed by railway
lines than the less lofty chains of Europe. From the heat of
the country, the snow-line lies high ; the chosen pass is in the
latitude of Constantinople or Oporto. The dryness of the

CHAP. Tin.] THE PACIFIC RAILROAD 65

air of the centre of a vast continent prevents the fall of heavy
snows or rains in winter. At eight or nine thousand feet above
the sea, in the Black Hills, or Eastern Piedmont, the drivers on
the Pacific line will have slighter snow-drifts to encounter than
their brothers on the Grand Trunk or the Camden and Amboy
at the sea-level. On the other hand, fuel and water are scarce,
and there is an endless succession of smaller snowy chains
which have to be crossed,* upon the Grand Plateau, or basin
of the Great Salt Lake. Whatever the difficulties, in 1870 the
line will be an accomplished fact

In the Act creating the Pacific Railroad Company, passed
in 1862, the company were bound to complete their line at the
rate of a hundred miles a year. They are completing it at
more than three times that rate.

When the Act is examined, it ceases to be strange that the
road should be pushed with extraordinary energy and speed,
so numerous are the baits offered to the companies to hasten
its completion. Money is to be advanced them ; land is to be
given them for every mile they finish — on a generous scale
while the line is on the plains, on three times the scale when
it reaches the more rugged tracts. These grants alone are
estimated at twenty millions of acres. Besides the alternate
sections, a width of 400 feet, with additional room for works
and stations, is granted for the line. The Californian Com-
pany is tempted by similar offers to a race with the Union
Pacific, and each company is struggling to get the most land
upon the basin. It is the interest of the Eastern Company
that the junction should be as far as possible to the west ; of
the Western, that it should be as far as possible to the east.
The result is an average laying of three, and an occasional
construction of four, miles a day. If we look to the progress
at both ends, we find as much sometimes laid in a day as a
bullock train could travel. So fast do the head-quarters " cities"
keep moving forwards, that at the Californian end the super-
intendent wished me to believe, that whenever his chickens
heard a wagon pass, they threw themselves upon their backs,
and held UD their legs, that they might be tied, and thrown

* They have been avoided by the Northern route through Humboldt
Valley.

66 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP, vm-

into the cart for a fresh move. "They are true birds-of-
passage," he said.

When the iron trains are at the front, the laying will for a
short time go on at the rate of nine yards in every fifteen
seconds ; but three or four hundred tons of rails have to be
brought up every day upon the single track, and it is in this
process that the time is lost

The advance carriages of the construction-train are well
supplied with rifles hung from the roofs ; but even when the
Indians forget their amaze, and attack the " city upon wheels,"
or tear up the track, they are incapable of destroying the line
so fast as the machinery can lay it down. " Soon," as a
Denver paper said, during my stay in the Mountain City, " the
iron horse will sniff the Alpine breeze upon the summit of the
Black Hills, 9000 feet above the sea;" and upon the plateau,
where deer are scarce and buffalo unknown, the Indians have
all but disappeared. The worst Indian country is already
crossed, and the red men have sullenly followed the buffalo to
the South, and occupy the country South West of Kansas State,
contenting themselves with preventing the construction of the
Santa Fe route to California.

If the end to be kept in view in the construction of the first
Pacific railroad line were merely the traffic from China and
Japan to Europe, or the shortest route from San Francisco to
Hampton Roads, the Kansas route through St. Louis, Denver,
and the Berthoud Pass would be, perhaps, the best and shortest
of those within the United States ; but the Saskatchewan line
through British territory, with Halifax and Puget Sound for
ports, would be still more advantageous for the former. As it
is, the true question seems to be, not the trade between the
Pacific and Great Britain, but between Asia and America ; for
Pennsylvania and Ohio must be the manufacturing countries of
the next fifty years.

Whatever our theory, the fact is plain enough: in 1870 we
shall reach San Francisco from London in less time than by
the severest travelling I could reach it from Denver in 1866.*

Wherever, in the States, North and South have met in con-
flict, North has won. New York has beaten Norfolk ; Chicago,
* In 1875 I reached San Francisco from London in eighteen days.

CHAP vm.] THE PACIFIC EAILROAD. 67

in spite of its inferior situation, has beaten the older St. Louis.
In the same way, Omaha is carrying off the trade from Leaven-
worth, Lawrence, and Kansas City. Ultimately Puget Sound
may beat San Francisco in the race for the Pacific trade, and
the Southern cities become still less able to keep their place
than they have been hitherto. Time after time Chicago has
thrown out intercepting lines, and diverted from St. Louis trade
which seemed of necessity to belong to her ; and the success of
the Union Pacific line, and failure of the Kansas road, is a fresh
proof of the superior energy of the Northern to the Southern
city. This time a fresh element enters into the calculation, and
declares for Chicago. The great circle route, the true straight
line, is in these great distances shorter by fifty or a hundred
miles than the straight lines of the maps and charts, and the
Platte route becomes not only the natural, but the shortest
route from sea to sea.

Chicago has a great advantage over St Louis in her com-
parative freedom from the cholera, which yearly attacks the
Missourian city. During my stay in St. Louis, the deaths from
cholera alone were known to have reached 200 a day, in a
population diminished by flight to 180,000. A quarantine was
established on the river ; the sale of fruit and vegetables pro-
hibited ; prisoners released on condition that they should work
at burying the dead; and funeral corteges were forbidden.
Chicago, herself unreached by the plague, was scattering hand-
bills on every Western railroad line, warning immigrants against
St Louis.

One of the chief causes of the future wealth of America is to
be found in the fact that all her "inland" towns are ports.
The State of Michigan lies between 500 and 900 miles from the
ocean, but that single State has upon the great lakes a coast of
1500 miles. From Fort Benton to the sea by water is nearly
4000 miles, but the post is a much-used steamboat port, though
more distant, even in the air-line, from the nearest sea upon the
same side the dividing range, than is the White Sea from the
Persian Gulf. Put it in which way you would, Europe could
not hold the Mississippi river.

A great American city is almost invariably placed at a point
where an important railroad finds an outport on a lake or river.

r a

68 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. vin.

This is no adaptation to railways of the Limerick saying about
rivers, namely, that Providence has everywhere so placed them
as to pass through the great towns ; for in America railways
precede population, and when mapped out and laid, they are
but tramways in the desert There is no great wonder in this
when we remember that 158,000,000 acres of land have been
up to this time granted to railroads in America.

One tendency of a costly railroad system is that few lines
will be made, and trade being thus driven into certain
unchanging routes, a small number of cities will flourish
greatly, and, by acting as housing stations or as ports, will rise
to enormous wealth and population. Where a system of cheap
railways is adopted, there will be year by year a tendency to
multiply lines of traffic, and consequently to multiply also ports
and seats of trade — a tendency, however, which may be more
than neutralised by any special circumstances which may cause
the lines of transit to converge rather than run parallel to one
another. Of the system of costly grand trunk lines we have an
instance in India, where we see the creation of Umritsur and
the prosperity of Calcutta alike due to our single great Bengal
line ; of the converging system we have excellent instances in
Chicago and Bombay ; while we see the plan of parallel lines in
action here in Kansas, causing the comparative equality of
progress manifested in Leavenworth, in Atchison, in Omaha.
The coasts of India swarmed with ports till our trunk lines
ruined Goa and Surat to advance Bombay, and a hundred
village ports to push our factory at Calcutta, founded by
Charnock as late as 1690, but now grown to be the third or
fourth city of the empire.

Of the dozen chaotic cities which are struggling for the
honour of becoming the future capital of the West, Leaven-
worth, with 20,000 people, three daily papers, an opera house,
and 200 drinking saloons, was, at the time of my visit in 1866,
somewhat ahead of Omaha with its 12,000 t^vo papers, and a
44 one-horse " theatre, though the Northern city tied Leaven-
worth in the point of " saloons."

Omaha, Leavenworth, Kansas City, Wyandotte, Atchison,
Topeka, Lecompton, and Lawrence, each praises itself, and
runs* down its neighbour. Leavenworth claims to be so healthy

CHAP, vm.] THE PACIFTG RAILROAD. 69

that when it lately became necessary to " inaugurate " the new
graveyard, " they had to shoot a man on purpose " — a change
since the days when the Southern " Border Ruffians " were in the
habit of parading its streets, bearing the scalps of Abolitionists,
stuck on poles. On the other hand, a Nebraska man, when
asked whether the Kansas people were fairly honest, said :
" Don't know 'bout honest ; but they do say as how the folk
around take in their stone fences every night." Lawrence, the
State capital, which is on the dried-up Kansas river, sneeringly
says of all the new towns on the Missouri that the boats that
ply between them are so dangerous that the fare is collected
in instalments every five minutes throughout the trip. Next
after the jealousy between two Australian colonies, there is
nothing equal to the hatreds between cities competing for the
same trade. Omaha has now the best chance of becoming the
capital of the Far West, but Leavenworth will no doubt con-
tinue to be the chief town of Kansas.

The progress of the smaller cities is amazing. Pistol-shots
by day and night are frequent, but trade and development are
little interfered with by such incidents as these ; and as the
village-cities are peopled up, the pioneers, shunning their
fellows, keep pushing westwards, seeking new "locations."
" You're the second man I've seen this fall ! Darn me, ef 'tain't
"bout time to varmose out westerly — y," is the standing joke of
che frontier-bars against each other.

******

At St. Louis I had met my friend Mr. Hepworth Dixon, just
out from England, and with him I visited the Kansas towns, and
then pushed through Waumego to Manhattan, the terminus (for
the day) of the Kansas Pacific line. Here we were thrust into
what space remained between forty leathern mail-bags and the
canvas roof of the mule-drawn ambulance, which was to be at
once our prison fo • six nights, and our fort upon wheels against
the Indians.

70 GREATER B&ITA1S. [CHAP, it

CHAPTER IX.

OMPHALISM.

DASHING through a grove of cottonwood trees draped in big-
nonia and ivy, we came out suddenly upon a charming scene :
a range of huts and forts crowning a long low hill seamed with
many a timber-clothed ravine, while the clear stream of the
Republican fork wreathed itself about the woods and bluffs,
The block house, over which floated the Stars and Stripes, was
Fort Riley, the Hyde Park Corner from which continents are
to measure all their mile.s ; the " capital of the universe," or
" centre of the world." Not that it has always been so. Geo-
graphers will be glad to learn that not only does the earth
gyrate, but that the centre of its crust also moves : within the
last ten years it has removed westward into Kansas from Mis-
souri— from Independence to Fort Riley. The contest for
centreship is no new thing. Herodotus held that Greece was
the very middle of the world, and that the unhappy Orientals
were frozen, and the yet more unfortunate Atlantic Indians
baked every afternoon of their poor lives in order that the sun
might shine on Greece at noon; London plumes herself on
being the " centre of the terrestrial globe ; " Boston is the " hub
of the hull universe," though the latter claim is less physical
than moral, I believe. In Fort Riley, the Western men seem to
have found the physical centre of the United States, but they
claim for the Great Plains the intellectual as well as the poli-
tical leadership of the whole continent. These hitherto un-
trodden tracks, they tell you, form the heart of the empire,
from which the life-blood must be driven to the extremities.
Geographical and political centres must ultimately coincide.
Connected with this belief is another Western theory — that

OHAP. ix.] OMPHALISM. 71

the powers of the future must be " Continental." Germany, or
else Russia, is to absorb all Asia and Europe, except Britain.
North America is already cared for, as the gradual extinction of
the Mexicans and absorption of the Canadians they consider
certain. As for South America, the Califomians are planning
an occupation of Western Brazil, on the ground that the con-
tinental power of South America must start from the head
waters of the great rivers, and spread seawards down the streams.
Even in the Brazilian climate, they believe that the Anglo-Saxon
is destined to become the dominant race.

The success of this omphalism, this government from the
centre, will be brought about, in the Western belief, by the
necessity under which the nations on the head waters of all
streams will find themselves of having the outlets in their hands.
Evtn if it be true that railways are beating rivers, still the rail-
way: must also lead seawards to the ports, and the need for
their control is still felt by the producers in the centre countries
of the continent. The Upper States must everywhere com-
mand "he Lower, and salt-water despotism find its end.

The Americans of the Valley States, who fought all the more
heartily in the Federal cause from the fact that they were
battling for the freedom of the Mississippi against the men who
held its mouth, look forward to the time when they will have
to assert, oeaceably but with firmness, their right to the freedom
of their riilways through the Northern Atlantic States. What-
ever their respect for New England, it cannot be expected that
they are for ever to permit Illinois and Ohio to be neutralised
in the Senae by Rhode Island and Vermont. If it goes hard
with New Ingland, it will go still harder with New York ; and
the Western men look forward to the day when Washington will
be removed, Congress and all, to Columbus or Fort Riley.

The singukr wideness of Western thought, always verging on
extravagance, is traceable to the width of Western land. The
immensity of the continent produces a kind of intoxication ;
there is moral dram-drinking in the contemplation of the map.
No Fourth of july oration can come up to the plain facts con-
tained in the Lmd Commissioner's report. The public domain
of the United Sates still consists of one thousand five hundred
millions of acns ; there are two hundred thousand squar*

71 GREATER BRITAIN. |CMAf rx.

miles of coal-lands in the country — ten times as much as in all
the remaining world. In the Western territories not yet States,
there is land sufficient to bear, at the English population rate,
five hundred and fifty millions of human beings.

It is strange to see how the Western country dwarfs the
Eastern States. Buffalo is called a " Western City; " yet from
New York to Buffalo is only three hundred and fifty miles, and
Buffalo is but seven hundred miles to the west of the most
eastern point in all the United States. On the other hand,
from Buffalo we can go two thousand five hundred miles west-
wards without quitting the United States. " The West " is eigfa
times as wide as the Atlantic States, and will soon be eiglt
times as strong.

The conformation of North America is widely different to
that of any other continent on the globe. In Europe, the
glaciers of the Alps occupy the centre point, and shed the
waters towards each of the surrounding seas : conflueice is
almost unknown. So it is in Asia : there the Indus fowing
into the Arabian Gulf, the Oxus into the Sea of Aral, tie Gan-
ges into the Bay of Bengal, the Yangtse Kiang into the Pacific,
and the Yenesei into the Arctic Ocean, all take their rise in the
central tableland. In South America, the mountain? form a
wall upon the west, whence the rivers flow eastwards h parallel
lines. In North America alone are there mountairs on each
coast, and a trough between, into which the rivers flov together,
giving in a single valley 23,000 miles of navigable steam to be
ploughed by steamships. The map proclaims tie essential
unity of North America. Political geography miglt be a more
interesting study than it has yet been made.

In reaching Leavenworth, I had crossed two of the five
divisions of America : the other three lie before ne on my way
to San Francisco. The eastern slopes of the jLlleghanies, or
Atlantic coast j their western slopes; the Greit Plains; the
Grand Plateau, and the Pacific coast — these aie the five divi-
sions. Fort Riley, the centre of the United States, is upon
the border of the third division, the Great Plahs. The Atlantic
coast is poor and stony, but the slight altitude of the Alleghany
chain has prevented it being a hindrance to the passage of
population to the West : the second of the divisions is now the

. nc.] OMPHALTSM. 73

richest and most powerful of the five ; but the wave of immi-
gration is crossing the Mississippi and Missouri into the Great
Plains, and here at Fort Riley we are upon the limit of
civilization.

This spot is not only the centre of the United States and of
the continent, but, if Denver had contrived to carry the Pacific
railroad by the Berthoud Pass, would have been the centre
station upon what Governor Gilpin of Colorado calls the
" Asiatic and European railway line." As it is, Columbus in
Nebraska has somewhat a better chance of becoming the
Washington of the future than has this blockhouse.

Quitting Fort Riley, we found ourselves at once upon the
Plains. No more sycamore and white-oak and honey-locust ;
no more of the rich deep green of the cottonwood ; but
yellow earth, yellow flowers, yellow grass, and here and there
groves of giant sunflowers with yellow blooms, but no more
trees.

As the sun set, we came on a body of cavalry marching
slowly from the Plains towards the Fort. Before them, at some
little distance, walked a sad-faced man on foot. ;n sober riding-
dress, with a repeating carbine slung across his back. It was
Sh*mian returning from his expedition to Santa Fe.

74 GREATER BHITAIN. foBx*. x

CHAPTER X

LETTER FROM DENVER.

Monday, yd September.

MY EEAR ,

Here we are, scalps and all.

On Tuesday last, at sundown, we left Fort Riley and supped
at Junction City,* the extreme point that "civilization" has
reached upon the Plains. Civilization means whisky : post-
offices don't count

It was here that it first dawned upon us that we were being
charged 500 dollars to guard the United States' Californian
mail, with the compensation of the chance of being ourselves
able to rob it with impunity. It is at all events the case that
we, well armed as the mail-officers of Leavenworth insisted on
our being, sat inside with forty-two cwt. of mail, in open bags,
and over a great portion of the route had only the driver with
us, without whose knowledge we could have read all and stolen
most of the letters, and with whose knowledge, but against
whose will, we could have carried off the whole, leaving him
gagged, bound, and at the mercy of the Indians. As it was, a
mail-bag fell out one day, without the knowledge of either Dixou
or the driver, who were outside, and I had to shout pretty
freely before they would pull up.

On Wednesday we had our last " squar' meal " in the shape
of a breakfast, at Fort Ellsworth, and soon were out upon the
almost unknown Plains. In the morning we caught up and
passed long wagon trains, each wagon drawn by eight oxen, and
guarded by two drivers and one horseman, all arme'l with

* Burnt by the Indians in 1868.

CTUP. T.) LETTER FROM DENVER. 75

breech-loading rifles and revolvers, or with the new " repeaters,"
before which breech-loaders and revolvers must alike go down.
All day we kept a sharp look-out for a party of seven American
officers, who, in defiance of the scout's advice; had gone out
from the fort to hunt buffalo upon the track. About sundown
we came into the little station of Lost Creek. The ranchmen
told us that they had, during the day, been driven in from their
work by a party of Cheyennes, and that they had some doubts
as to the wisdom of the officers in going out to hunt.

Just as we were leaving the station, one of the officers' horses
dashed in riderless and was caught ; and about two miles from
the station we passed another on its back, ripped up- either by
a knife or buffalo horn. The saddle was gone, but there were
no other marks of a fight. We believe that these officers were
routed by buffaloes, not Cheyennes, but still we should be glad
to hear of them.

The track is marked in many parts of the Plains by stakes,
such as those from which the Llano Estacado takes its name ;
but this evening we turned off into devious lines by way of
precaution against ambuscades, coming round through the
sandy beds of streams to the ranches for the change of mules.
The ranchmen were always ready for us ; for while we were
still a mile away, our driver would put his hand to his mouth
and give a " How ! how ! how ! how — w !" the Cheyenne war-
whoop.

In the weird glare that follows sunset, we came upon some
rocks, admirably fitted for an ambush. As we neared them,
the driver said : " It's 'bout an even chance thet we's sculp
ther' !" We could not avoid them, as there was a gully ihat
could only be crossed at this one point. We dashed down into
the " creek " and up again past the rocks : there were no
Indians, but the driver was most uneasy till we reached Big
Creek.

Here they could give us nothing whatever to eat, the Indians
having, on Tuesday, robbed them of everything they had, and
ordered them to leave within fifteen days on pain of death.

For 250 miles westwards from Big Crtek, we found that every
station had been warned (and most plundered) by bands of
Cheyennes, on behalf of the forces of the Confederation

76 GREATER BE1TATN. [CHAP, l,

encamped near the creek itself. The warning was in all cases
that of fire and death at the end of fifteen days, of which nine
days have expired. We found the horse-keepers of the Com
pany everywhere leaving their stations, and were, in conse-
quence, very nearly starved, having been unsuccessful in our
shots from the " coach," except, indeed, at the snakes.

On Thursday we passed Big Timber, the only spot on the
Plains where there are trees ; and there the Indians had
counted the trunks, and solemnly warned the men against
cutting more : " Fifty-two tree. You no cut more tree —
no more cut. Grass ! You cut grass ; grass make big fire,
You good boy — you clear out. Fifteen day, we come : you
no gone — ugh 1" The " ugh " accompanied by an expressive
pantomime.

On Thursday evening we got a meal of buffalo and prairie
dog, the former too strong for my failing stomach, the latter
wholesome nourishment, and fit for kings — as like our rabbit in
flavour as he is in shape. This was at the horse-station of
" The Monuments," a natural temple of awesome grandeur,
rising from the plains like a giant Stonehenge.

On Friday we " breakfasted " at Pond Creek Station, two
miles from Fort Wallis. Here the people had applied for a
guard, and had been answered : " Come into the fort ; we
can't spare a man." So much for the value of the present
forts ; and yet even these — Wallis and Ellsworth — are 200 miles
apart.*

We were joined at breakfast by Bill Comstock,t interpreter
to the fort — a long-haired, wild-eyed half-breed — who gave us,
in an hour's talk, the full history of the Indian politics that
have led to the present war.

The Indians, to the number of 20,000, have been in council
with the Washington Commissioners all this summer at Fort
Laramie ; and after being clothed, fed, and armed, lately con-
cluded a treaty, allowing the running of the mail-roads. They
now assert that this treaty was intended to apply to the Platte
road (from Omaha and Atchison through Fort Kearney), and

• On the loth July, 1867, the Cheyennes attacked Fort Wallis.
t Scalped by the Cheyennes at Pond Creek in 1868.

CHAP, x.] LETTER FROM DENVER. 7?

to the Aikansas road, but not to the Smoky Hill road, which
lies between the others, and runs through the buffalo country ;
but their real opposition is to the railroad. The Cheyennes
(pronounced Shfans) have got the Comanches, Appaches, and
Arapahoes from the south, and the Sioux and Kiowas from the
north, to join them in a confederation under the leadership of
Spotted Dog, the chief of the Little Dog Section of the Chey-
ennes, and son of White Antelope — killed at Sand Creek
battle by the Kansas and Colorado Volunteers — who has sworn
to avenge his father.

Soon after leaving Pond Creek, we sighted at a distance
three mounted " braves," leading some horses ; and when we
reached the next station, we found that they had been there,
openly proclaiming that their mounts had been stolen from a
team.

All this day we sat with our revolvers laid upon the mail-
bags in front of us, and our driver also had his armoury con-
spicuously displayed, while we swept the Plains with many an
anxious glance. We were on lofty rolling downs, and to the
south the eye often ranged over much of the 130 miles which
lay between us and Texas. To the north, the view was more
bounded ; still, our chief danger lay near the boulders which
here and there covered the Plains.

All Thursday and Friday we never lost sight of the buffalo,
in herds of about 300, and the " antelope " — the prong-horn, a
kind of gazelle — in flocks of six or seven. Prairie dogs were
abundant, and wolves and black-tail deer in view at every
turn.

The most singular of all the sights of the Plains is the
constant presence of the skeletons of buffalo and of horse, of
mule and of ox ; the former left by the hunters, who take but
the skin, and the latter the losses of the mails and the wagon-
trains through sunstroke and thirst. We killed a horse on the
second day of our journey.

When we came upon oxen that had not long been dead, we
found that the intense dryness of the air had made mummies
of them : there was no stench, no putrefaction.

During the day, I made some practice at antelope with the
driver's Ballard ; but an antelope at 500 yards is not an easy

7» GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. x.

target. The drivers shot repeatedly at buffalo at twenty yards,
but this only to keep them away from the horses ; the revolver
balls did not seem to go through their hair and skin, as they
merely shambled on in their usual happy sort of way, aftei
receiving a discharge or two.

The prairie dogs sat barking in thousands on the tops ol
their mounds, but we were too grateful to them for their gaiety
to dream of pistol-shots. They are no " dogs " at all, but
rabbits that bark, with all the coney's tricks and turns, and the
same odd way of rubbing their face with their paws while they
con you from top to toe.

With wolves, buffalo, antelope, deer, skunks, marmots, plover,
curlew, dottrel, herons, vultures, ravens, snakes, and locusts,
we never seemed to be without a million companions in our
loneliness.

From Cheyenne Wells, where we changed mules in the
afternoon, we brought on the ranchman's wife, painfully making
room for her at our own expense. Her husband had been
warned by the Cheyennes that the place would be destroyed :
he meant to stay, but was in fear for her.* The Cheyennes had
made her cook for them, and our supper had gone down Chey-
enne throats.

Soon after leaving the station, we encountered one of the
great " dirt-storms " of the Plains. About five P.M. I saw a
little white cloud growing into a column, which in half an hour
turned black as night, and possessed itself of half the skies.
We then saw what seemed to be a waterspout ; and though no
rain reached us, I think it was one. When the storm burst on
us, we took it for rain ; and, halting, drew down our canvas,
and held it against the hurricane. We soon found that our
eyes and mouths were full of dust ; and when I put out my
hand, I felt that it was dirt, not rain, that was falling. In a
few minutes it was pitch dark, and after the fall had continued
for some time, there began a series of flashes of blinding
lightning, in the very centre and midst of which we seemed to
be. Notwithstanding this, there was no sound of thunder.
The " norther " lasted some three or four hours ; and when it
ceased, it left us total darkness, and a wind which froze our

* He was murdered the next week.

CHAP, x.] LETTER FROM DENVER. 79

marrow as we again started on our way. When Fremont ex-
plored this route, he reported that the high ridge between the
Platte and Arkansas was notorious among the Indfans for its
tremendous dirt-storms. Sheet lightning without thunder accom-
panies dust-storms in all great continents : it is as common in
the Punjaub as in Australia, in South as in North America.

On Saturday morning, at Lake Station, we got beyond the
Indians, and into a land of plenty, or at all events a land of
something, for we obtained milk from the station cow, and pre-
served fruits that had come round through Denver from Ohio
and Kentucky. Not even on Saturday, however, could we get
dinner ; and as I missed the only antelope that came within
reach, our supper \vas-;not much heavier than our breakfast.

Rolling through the Arapahoe country, where it is proposed
to make a reserve for thet Cheyennes, at eight -o'clock on
Saturday morning we caught sight of the glittering snows of
Pike's Peak, a hundred and fifty miles away, and all the day
we were galloping towards it, through a country swarming with
rattlesnakes and vultures. Late in the evening, when we were
drawing near to the first of the Coloradan farms, we came on a
white wolf unconcernedly taking his evening prowl about the
stock-yards. He sneaked along without taking any notice of
us, and continued his thief-like walk with a bravery that seemed
only to show that he had never seen man before ; this might
well be the case, if he came from the south, near the upper
forks of the Arkansas.

All this, and the frequency of buffalo, I was unprepared for.
I imagined that though the Plains were uninhabited, the game
had all been killed. On the contrary, the " Smoky district "
was never known so thronged with buffalo as it is this year
The herds resort to it because there they are close to the water
of the Platte river, and yet out of the reach of the traffic of
the Platte road. The tracks they make in travelling to and
fro across the Plains are visible for years after they have ceased
to use them. I have seen them as broad and as straight as the
finest of Roman roads.

On Sunday, at two in the morning, we dashed into Denver ;
and as we reeled and staggered from our late prison, the
ambulance, into the "cockroach corral" which does duty for

to GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP, x,

the bar-rooin of the " Planters' House," we managed to find
strength and words to agree that we would fix no time for
meeting the next day. We expected to sleep for thirty hours ,
as it was, we met at breakfast at seven A.M., less than five
hours from the time we parted. It is to-day that we feel
exhausted ; the exhilaration of the mountain air, and the
excitement of frequent visits, carried us through yesterday.
Dixon is suffering from strange blains and boils, caused by the
unwholesome food.

We have been called upon here by Governor Gilpin and
Governor Cummings, the opposition governors. The former is
the elected governor of the State of Colorado which is to be,
and would have been but for the fact that the President put
his big toe (Western for veto) upon the bill ; the latter, the
Washington-sent governor of the Territory. Gilpin is a typical
pioneer man, and the descendant of a line of such. He comes
of one of the original Quaker stocks of Maryland, and he and
his ancestors have ever been engaged in founding States. He
himself, after taking an active share in the foundation of
Kansas, commanded a regiment of cavalry in the Mexican war.
After this, he was at the head of the pioneer army which
explored the pares of the Cordilleras and the Territory oi
Nevada. .He it was who hit upon the glorious idea of placing
Colorado half upon each side of the Sierra Madre. There never
in the history of the world was a grander idea than this. Any
ordinary pioneer or politician would have given Colorado the
" natural " frontier, and have tried for the glory of the founda-
tion of two States instead of one. The consequence would
have been lasting disunion between the Pacific and Atlantic
States, and a possible future break-up of the country. As it is,
this commonwealth, little as it at present is, links sea to sea,
and Liverpool to Hong Kong.

The city swarms with Indians of the bands commanded by
the chiefs Nevara and Colloreyo. They are at war with the
six confederate tribes, and with the Pawnees — with all the
Plain Indians, in short. Now, as the Pawnees are also at war
with the six tribes, there is a pretty triangular fight. They
came in to buy arms, and fearful scoundrels they look. Short,
flat-nosed, long-haired, painted in red and blue, and dressed

BUM.] LETTER FKOM DENVER. 81

in a gaudy costume, half Spanish, half Indian, which makes
their filthiness appear more filthy by contrast, and themselves
carrying only their Ballard and Smith-and-Wesson, but forcing
the squaws to carry all their other goods, and papooses in
addition, they present a spectacle of unmixed ruffianism which I
never expect to see surpassed. Dixon and I, both of us, left
London with " Lo ! the poor Indian," in all his dignity and
hook-nosedness, elevated on a pedestal of nobility in our
hearts. Our views were shaken in the East, but nothing revolu-
tionised them so rapidly as our three days' risk of scalping in
the Plains. John Howard and Mrs. Beecher Stowe themselves
would go in for the Western " disarm at any price, and exter-
minate if necessary " policy if they lived long in Denver. One
of the braves of Nevara's command brought in the scalp of a
Cheyenne chief taken by him last month, and to-day it hangs
outside the door of a pawnbroker's shop, for sale, fingered by
every passer-by.

Many of the band were engaged in putting on their paint,
which was bright vermilion, with a little indigo round the eye.
This, with the sort of pigtail which they wear, gives them the
look of the gnomes in the introduction to a London pantomime.
One of them — Nevara himself, I was told — wore a sombrero
with three scarlet plumes, taken probably from a Mexican, a
crimson jacket, a dark-blue shawl, worn round the loins and
over the arm in Spanish dancer fashion, and embroidered
mocassins. His squaw was a vermilion-faced bundle of rags,
not more than four feet high, staggering under buffalo hides,
bow and arrows, and papoose. They move everywhere on
horseback, and in the evening withdraw in military order, with
advance and rear guard, to a camp at some distance from the
town.

I inclose some prairie flowers, gathered in my walks round
the city. Their names are not suited to their beauty ; the large
white one is " the morning blower," the most lovely of all, save
one, of the flowers of the Plains. It grows with many branches
to a height of some eighteen inches, and bears from thirty to
fifty blooms. The blossoms are open up to a little after sunrise,
when they close, seldom to open even after sunset. It is,
therefore, peculiarly the early riser's flower ; and if it be true

8i GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. i.

that Nature doesn't make things in vain, it follows that Nature
intended men— or, at all events, some men — to get up early,
which is a point that I believe was doubtful hitherto.

For the one prairie flower which I think more beautiful than
the blower, I cannot find a name. It rises to about six inches
above ground, and spreads in a circle of a foot across. Its leaf
is thin and spare; its flower-bloom a white cup, about two
inches in diameter ; and its buds pink and pendulent.

All our garden annuals are to be found in masses acres in
size upon the Plains. Pentstemon, coreopsis, persicaria, yucca,
dwarf sumach, marigold, and sunflower, all are flowering here
at once, till the country is ablaze with gold and red. The
coreopsis of our gardens they call the " rosin-weed," and say
that it forms excellent food for sheep.

The view of the " Cordillera della Sierra Madre," the Rocky
Mountain main chain, from the outskirts of Denver is sublime ;
that from the roof at Milan does not approach it. Twelve
miles from the city the mountains rise abruptly from the Plains.
Piled range above range with step-like regularity, they are
topped by a long white line, sharply relieved against the indigo
of the sky. Two hundred and fifty miles of the mother Sierra
are in sight from our verandah ; to the south, Pike's Peak and
Spanish Peak ; Long's Peak to the north ; Mount Lincoln
towering above all. The views are limited only by the curva-
ture of the earth, such is the marvellous purity of the Coloradan
air, the effect at once of the distance from the sea and of the
bed of limestone which underlies the Plains.

The site of Denver is heaven-blessed in climate as well as
loveliness. The sky is brilliantly blue, and cloudless from dawn
till noon. In the mid-day heats, cloud-making in the Sierra
begins, and by sunset the snowy chain is multiplied a hundred
times in curves of white and purple cumuli, while thunder rolls
heavily along the range. " This is a great country, sir," said a
Coloradan to me to-day. "We make clouds for the whole
universe." At dark there is dust or thunder-storm at the moun-
tain foot, and then the cold and brilliant night Summer and
winter, it is the same.

CHAPTER XI

RED INDIA.

"THESE Red Indians are not red," \vas our first cry when ttre
saw the Utes in the streets of Denver. They had come into
town to be painted as English ladies go to London to shop ;
and we saw them engaged within a short time after their arrival
in daubing their cheeks with vermilion and blue, and referring
to glasses which the squaws admiringly held. Still, when we
met them with peaceful paintless cheeks, we had seen that their
colour was brown, copper, dirt, anything you please except red.

The Hurons, with whom I had stayed at Lorette, were
French in training if not in blood ; the Pottawatomies of St.
Mary's Mission, the Delawares of Leavenworth, are tame
Indians. It is true that they are not red, but I had expected
to have found these wild prairie and mountain Indians of the
colour from which they take their name. Save for paint, I
found them of a colour wholly different from that which we
call red.

Low in stature, yellow-skinned, small-eyed, and Tartar-faced,
the Indians of the Plains are a distinct people from the tall,
hook-nosed warriors of the Eastern States. It is impossible to
set eyes on their women without being reminded of the dwarf
skeletons found in the mounds of Missouri and Iowa ; but, men
or women, the Utes bear no resemblance to the bright-eyed,
graceful people with whom Penn traded and Standish fought.
They are not less inferior in mind than in body. It was no
Shoshore, no Ute, no Cheyenne who called the rainbow the
" heaven of flowers," the moon the " night queen," or the stars
" God's eyes." The Plain tribes are as deficient, too, in heroes
as in poetry : they have never even produced a general, and
White Antelope is their nearest approach to a Tecumseh.
Their mode of life, the natural features of the country in which

G 3

»4 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xi.

they dwell, have nothing in them to suggest a reason for their
debased condition. The reason must lie in the blood, the race.

All who have seen both the Indians and the Polynesians at
home must have been struck with innumerable resemblances.
The Maori and Reo. Indian wakes for the dead are identical :
the Californian Indi; ns wear the Maori mat ; the " medicine "
of the Mandan is b it the " tapu " of Polynesia ; the New
Zealand dance-song, tr e Maori tribal sceptre, were found alike
by Strachey in Virginia ind Drake in California : the canoes of
the West Indies are the same as those of Polynesia. Hundreds
of arguments, best touched from the farther side of the Pacific,
concur to prove the Indians a Polynesian race. The canoes
that brought to Easter Island the people who built their mounds
and rock temples there, may as easily have been carried on by
the Chilian breeze and current to the South American shore.
The wave from Malaya would have spent itself upon the
northern plains. The Utes would seem to be Kamskatkians,
or men of the Amoor, who, fighting their way round by Behring
Straits, and then down south, drove a wedge between the Poly-
nesians of Appalachia and California. No theory but this will
account for the sharp contrast between the civilization of ancient
Peru and Mexico, and the degradation in which the Utes
have lived from the earliest recorded times. Mounds, rock
temples, worship, all are alike unknown to the Indians of the
Plains ; to the Polynesian Indians, these were things that had
come down to them from all time.

Curious as is the question of the descent of the American
tribes, it has no bearing on the future of the country — unless,
indeed, in the eyes of those who assert that Delawares and
Utes, Hurons and Pawnees, are all one race, with features
modified by soil and climate. If this were so, the handsome,
rollicking, frank-faced Coloradan " boys " would have to look
forward to the time when their sons' sons should be as like the
Utes as many New Englanders of to-day are like the Indians
they expelled — that, as the New Englanders are tall, taciturn,
and hatchet-faced, the Coloradans of the next age should be
flat-faced warriors, five feet high. Confidence in the future of
America must be founded on a belief in the indestructible
vitality of race.

THAT xi.] RED INDIA. 85

Kamskatkians or Polynesians, Malays or sons of the prairies
on which they dwell, the Red Indians have no future. In
twenty years there will scarcely be one of pure blood alive
within the United States.

In La Plata, the Indians from the inland forests gradually
mingle with the whiter inhabitants of the coast, and become
indistinguishable from the remainder of the population. In
Canada and Tahiti, the French intermingle with the native
race : the Hurons are French in everything but name. In
Kansas, in Colorado, in New Mexico, miscegenation will never
be brought about. The pride of race, strong in the English
everywhere, in America and Australia is an absolute bar to
intermarriage, and even to lasting connexions with the
aborigines. What has happened in Tasmania and Victoria is
happening in New Zealand and on the Plains. When you ask
a Western man his views on the Indian question, he says : —
" Well, sir, we can destroy them by the laws of war, or thin 'em
out by whisky ; but the thinning process is plaguy slow."

There are a good many Southerners out upon the Plains.
One of them, describing to me how in Florida they had hunted
down the Seminoles with bloodhounds, added, " And sarved the
pesky sarpints right, sah ! " South-western volunteers, cam-
paigning against the Indians, have been known to hang up in
their tents the scalps of the slain, as we English used to- nail up
the skins of the Danes.*

There is in these matters less hypocrisy among the Americans
than with ourselves. In 1840, the British Government assumed
the sovereignty of New Zealand in a proclamation which set
forth with great precision that it did so for the sole purpose of
protecting the aborigines in the possession of their lands. The
Maories numbered 200,000 then : they number 20,000 now.

Among the Western men there is no difference of opinion on
the Indian question. Rifle and revolver are their only policy.
The New Englanders, who are all for Christianity and kindliness
;n their dealings with the red men, are not similarly united in
one cry. Those who are ignorant of the nature of the Indian,
call out for agricultural employment for the braves ; those who

* Even as late as my journey of 1875, I found by the comments of
the Press on the scalping of a Shoshone1 by the Piocbe volunteer*
(September 8th)t that the practice was still common.

86 GREATER BEITAIN. [CHAP, xi

know nothing of the Indian's life demand that " reserves " be
set aside for him, forgetting that no " reserve " can be large
enough to hold the buffalo, and that without the buffalo the
red men must plough or starve.

Indian civilization through the means of agriculture is all but
a total failure. The Shawnees are thriving near Kansas City,
the Pottawatomies living at St. Mary's Mission, the Delawares
existing at Leavenworth ; but in all these cases there is a large
infusion of white blood. The Canadian Hurons are completely
civilized ; but then they are completely French. If you succeed
with an Indian to all appearance, he will suddenly return to his
untamed state. • An Indian girl, one of the most orderly of the
pupils at a ladies' school, has been known, on feeling herself
aggrieved, to withdraw to her room, let down her back hair,
paint her face, and howl. The same tendency showed itself in
the case of the Delaware chief who built himself a white man's
house, and lived in it thirty years, but then suddenly set up his
old wigwam in the dining-room in disgust Another bad case is
that of the Pawnee who visited Buchanan, and behaved so well
that when a young Englishman, who came out soon after, told
the President he was going West, he gave him a letter to the
chief, then with his tribe in Northern Kansas. The Pawnee read
the note, offered a pipe, gravely protested eternal friendship, slept
upon it, and next morning scalped his visitor with his own hand.

The English everywhere attempt to introduce civilization, or
to modify that which exists, in a rough-and-ready manner which
invariably ends in failure or in the destruction of the native
race. A hundred years of absolute rule, mostly peaceable, have
not, under every advantage, seen the success of our repeated
attempts to establish trial by jury in Bengal. For twenty years
the Maories have mixed with the New Zealand colonists on
nearly equal terms, have almost universally professed them-
selves Christians, have attended English schools, and learnt to
speak the English language, and to read and write their own ;
in spite of all this, a few weeks of fanatic outburst were enough
to reduce almost the whole race to a condition of degraded
savagery. The Indians of America have within the last few
years been caught and caged, given acres where they once had
leagues, and told to plough where once they hunted. A
pastoral race, with no conception of property in land, they have

CHAP. xi. | RBD INDIA. 87

been manufactured into freeholders and tenant farmers ;
Western Ishmaelites, sprung of a race which has wandered
since its legendary life begins, they have been subjected U
homestead laws and title registration. If our experiments in
'New Zealand, in India, and on the African coast have failed,
cautious and costly as they were, there can be no great wonder
in the unsuccess that has attended the hurried American experi-
ments. It is not for us, who have the past of Tasmania and the
present of Queensland to account for, to do more than record
the fact that the Americans are not more successful with the red
men of Kansas than we with the black men of Australia.
•The Bosjesman is not a more unpromising subject for civili-
zation than the red man ; the Ute is not even gifted with the
birthright of most savages, the mimetic power. The black man
in his dress, his farming, his religion, his family life, is always
trying to imitate the white. In the Indian there is none ot
this : his ancestors roamed over the Plains — he will roain ; his
ancestors hunted — why should not he hunt ? The American
savage, like his Asiatic cousins, is conservative ; the African
changeable, and strong in imitative faculties of the mind. Just
as the Indian is less versatile than the negro, so, if it were
possible gradually to change his mode of life, and slowly to
bring him to the agricultural state, he would probably become
a skilful and laborious cultivator, and worthy inhabitant of the
western soil ; as it is, he is exterminated before he has time to
learn. " Sculp 'em fust, and then talk to 'em," the Coloradans say.
Peace Commissioners are yearly sent from Washington to
treat with hostile tribes upon the Plains. The Indians invari-
ably continue to fight and rcb till winter is at hand ; but when
the snows appear, they send in runners to announce that they
are prepared to make submission. The Commissioners appoint
a place, and the tribe, their relatives, allies, and friends come
down thousands strong, and enter upon debates which are pur-
posely prolonged till spring. All this time the Indians are kept
in food and drink ; whisky, even, is illegally provided them,
with the cognizance of the authorities, under the name of
"hatchets." Blankets and, it is said, powder and revolvers,
are supplied to them as necessary to their existence on the
Plains ; but when the first of the spring flowers begin to peep

88 GREATER BRfTAIX. [CHAP. XI,

up through the snow drifts on the prairies, they take their leave,
and in a few weeks are out again upon the war-path, plundering
and scalping all the whites.

Judging from English experience in the north, and Spanish
in Mexico and South America, it would seem as though the
white man and the red cannot exist on the same soil. Step by
step the English have driven back the braves, till New Englanders
now remember that there were Indians once in Massachusetts,
as we remember that once there were bears in Hampshire.
King Philip's defeat by the Connecticut Volunteers seems to
form part of the early legendary history of our race; yet
there is still standing, and in good repair, in Dorchester^a
suburb of Boston, a frame-house, which in its time has been
successfully defended against Red Indians. On the other hand,
step by step since the days of Cortez, the Indians and half-
bloods have driven out the Spaniards from Mexico and South
America. White men, Spaniards, received Maximilian at Vera
Cruz, but he was shot by full-blood Indians at Queretaro.

If any attempt is to be made to save the Indians that remain,
ft must be worked out in the Eastern States. Hitherto the
whites have but pushed back the Indians westward : if they
would rescue the remnant from starvation, they must bring
them East, away from Western men, and Western hunting
grounds, and let them intermingle with the whites, living, farm-
ing along with them, intermarrying if possible. The hunting'
Indian is too costly a being for our age ; but we are bound to
remember that ours is the blame of having failed to teach him
to be something better.

After all, if the Indian is mentally, morally, and physically
inferior to the white man, it is in every way for the advantage
of the world that the next generation that inhabits Colorado
should consist of whites instead of reds. That this result should
not be brought about by cruelty or fraud upon the now-existing
Indians, is all that we need require. The gradual extinction of
the inferior races is not only a law of nature, but a blessing to
mankind.

The Indian question is not likely to be one much longer :
before I reached England again, I learnt that the Coloradan
capital had offered " twenty dollars apiece for Indian scalps with
ears on."

CHAPTER XII.

COLORADO.

WHEN you have once set eyes upon the never-ending sweep of
the Great Plains, you no longer wonder that America rejects
Malthusianism. As Strachey says of Virginia, " Here is ground
enough to satisfy the most covetous and wide affection." The
freedom of these grand countries was worth the tremendous con-
flict in which it was, in reality, the foremost question ; their
future is of enormous moment to America.

Travellers soon learn, when making estimates of a country's
value, to despise no feature of the landscape ; that of the Plains
is full of life, full of charm — lonely, indeed, but never wearisome.
Now great rolling uplands of enormous sweep, now boundless
grassy plains ; there is all the grandeur of monotony, and yet
continual change. Sometimes the distances are broken by blue
buttes or rugged bluffs. Over all there is a sparkling atmo-
sphere and never-failing breeze ; the air is bracing even when
most hot ; the sky is cloudless, and no rain falls. A solitude
which no words can paint, and the boundless prairie swell,
convey an idea of vastness which is the overpowering feature
of the Plains.

Maps do not remove the impression produced by views.
The Arkansas river, which is born and dies within the limit of
the Plains, is two thousand miles in length, and is navigable for
eight hundred miles. The Platte and Yellowstone are each of
them as long. Into the Plains and Plateau you could put all
India twice. The impression is not merely one of size. There
is perfect beauty, wondrous fertility, in the lonely steppe ; no
patriotism, no love of home, can prevent the traveler wishing
nexe to end his days.

90 GREATER BRITAIN. CHAP, xu,

To thase who love the sea, there is a double cliarm. Not
only is the roll of the prairie as grand as that of the Atlantic,
but the crispness of the wind, the absence of trees, the multi-
tude of tiny bloom' jpon the sod, all conspire to give a feeling
of nearness to the ocean, the effect of which is that we are
always expecting to hail it from off the top of the next hillock.

The resemblance to the Tartar Plains has been remarked by
Coloradan writers ; it may be traced much further than they
have carried it. Not only are the earth, air, and water much
alike, but in Colorado, as in Bokhara, there are oil-wells and
mud volcanoes. The colour of the landscape is, in summer,
green and flowers ; in fall-time, yellow and flowers, but flowers
ever.

The eastern and western portions of the Plains are not alike.
In Kansas the grass is tall and rank ; the ravines are filled with
cottonwood, hickory, and black walnut ; here and there are
square miles of sunflowers, from seven to nine feet high. As we
came west, we found that the sunflowers dwindled, and at Denver
they are from three to nine inches in height, the oddest little
plants in nature, but thorough sunflowers for all their smallness.
We found the buffalo in the eastern plains in the long bunch-
grass, but in the winter they work to the west in search of the
sweet and juicy " blue grass," which they rub out from under
the snow in the Coloradan plains. This grass is crisp as hair,
and so short that, as the story goes, you must lather before you
mow it. The " blue grass " has high vitality : if a wagon train
is camped for a single night among the sunflowers or tall weeds,
this crisp turf at once springs up, and holds the ground for ever.

The most astounding feature of these plains is their capacity
to receive millions, and, swallowing them up, to wait open-
mouthed for more. Vast and silent, fertile yet waste, field-like
yet untilled, they have room for the Huns, the Goths, the
Vandals, for all the teeming multitudes, that have poured and
can pour from the plains of Asia and of Central Europe.
Twice as large as Hindostan, more temperate, more habitable,
nature has placed them here hedgeless, gateless, free to all — a
green field for the support of half the human race, unclaimed,
untouched, awaiting, smiling, hands and plough.

There are two curses upon this land. Here, as in India, the

CHAT', xii.l COLORADO. <»i

rivers depend on the melting of distant snows for their sup-
plies, and in the hot weather are represented by beds of
parched white sand. So hot and dry is a great portion of the
land, that crops require irrigation. Water for drinking purposes
is scarce ; artesian bores succeed, but they are somewhat costly
for the Coloradan purse, and the supply from common wells is
brackish. This, perhaps, may be in part accounted for by the
Western mode of " prospecting " after water, under which it is
agreed that if none be found at ten feet, a trial shall be made
at a fresh spot. The thriftless ranchman would sooner find bad
water at nine feet than good at eleven.

Irrigation by means of dams and reservoirs, such as those we
are building in Victoria, is but a question of cost and time.
The never-failing breezes of the Plains may be utilized for
water-raising,* and with water all is possible. Even in the
mountain plateau, overspread as it is with soda, it has been
found, as by French farmers in Algeria, that, under irrigation,
the more alkali the better corn-crop.

When fires are held in check by special enactments, such as
those which have been passed in Victoria and South Australia,
and the waters of the winter streams retained for summer use
by tanks and dams ; when artesian wells are frequent and irri-
gation general, belts of timber will become possible upon the
Plains. Once planted, these will in their turn mitigate the
extremes of climate, and keep alike in check the forces of
evaporation, sun, and wind. Cultivation itself brings rain, and
steam will soon be available for pumping water out of wells, for
there is a great natural store of brown coal and of oil-bearing
shale near Denver, so that the future would be bright were it
not for the locusts — the scourge of the Plains — the second
curse. The coming of the chirping hordes is a real calamity
in these far-western countries. Their departure, whenever it
occurs, is officially announced by the governor of the State.

I have seen a field of Indian corn stripped bare of every leaf
and cob by the " crickets ; " but the owner told me that he found
consolation in the fact that they ate up the weeds as well. For
the locusts there is no cure. The plovers may eat a few billions,

• This has new been Uuno.

«j» GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xn.

but, as a rule, Coloradans must learn to expect that the locusts
will increase with the increase of the crops on which they feed.
The more corn, the more locusts — the more plovers, perhaps ;
a clear gain to the locusts and plovers, but a dead loss to the
farmers and ranchmen.

The Coloradan "boys" are a handsome, intelligent race.
The mixture of Celtic and Saxon blood has here produced a
generous and noble manhood ; and the absence of forest, and
consequent exposure to wind and sun, has exterminated ague,
and driven away the hatchet-face ; but for all this, the Coloradans
may have to succumb to the locusts. At present they affect to
despise them. " How may you get on in Colorado ?" said a
Missourian one day to a "boy" that was up at St. Louis.
" Purty well, guess, if it warn't for the insects." " What insects ?
Crickets ?" " Crickets ! Wall, guess not — jess insects like :
rattlesnakes, panther, bar, catamount, and sich like."

" The march of empire stopped by a grasshopper " would be
a good heading for a Denver paper, but would not represent a
fact. The locusts may alter the step, but not cause a halt. If
corn is impossible, cattle are not ; already thousands are pas-
tured round Denver on the natural grass. For horses, for
merino sheep, these rolling table-lands are peculiarly adapted.
The New Zealand paddock system may be applied to the whole
of this vast region — Dutch clover, French lucern, could replace
the Indian grasses, and four sheep to the acre would seem no
extravagant estimate of the carrying capability of the lands.
The world must come here for its tallow, its wool, its hides, its
food.

In this seemingly happy conclusion there lurks a danger,
Flocks and herds are the main props of great farming, the
natural supporters of an aristocracy. Cattle breeding is incon-
sistent, if not with republicanism, at least with pure democracy.
There are dangerous classes of two kinds — those who have too
many acres, as well as those who have too few. The danger at
least is real. Nothing short of violence or special legislation
can prevent the Plains from continuing to be for ever that
which under nature's farming they have ever been — the feedirg
ground for mighty flocks, the cattle pasture of the world.

CHAPTER XIII

ROCKY MOUNTAINS.

*• WHAT will I do for you if you stop here among us ? Why,
I'll name that peak after you in the next survey," said Governor
Gilpin, pointing to a snowy mountain towering to its 15,000
feet in the direction of Mount Lincoln. I was not to be
tempted, however ; and as for Dixon, there is already a county
named after him in Nebraska : so off we went along the foot of
the hi!!s on our road to the Great Salt Lake, following the
" Cherokee Trail"

Striking north from Denver by Vasquez Fork and Cache la
Poudre — called " Cash le Powder," just as Mont Royal has be-
come Montreal, and Sault de Ste. Marie, Soo — we entered the
Black Mountains, or Eastern foot-hills, at Beaver Creek. On
the second day, at two in the afternoon, we reached Virginia
Dale for breakfast, without adventure, unless it were the shooting
of a monster rattlesnake that lay " coiled in our path upon the
mountain side." Had we been but a few minutes later, we
should have made it a halt for " supper " instead of breakfast,
as the drivers had but these two names for our daily meals, at
whatever hour they took place. Our " breakfasts " varied from
3.30 A.M. to 2 P.M. • our suppers from 3 P.M. to 2 A.M.

Here we found the weird red rocks that give to the river and
the territory their name of Colorado, and came upon the moun-
tain plateau at the spot where last year the Utes scalped seven
men only three hours after Speaker Colfax and a Congressional
party had passed with their escort.

While trundling over the sandy wastes of Laramie Plains, we
sighted the Wind river chain drawn by Bierstadt in his great
picture of the " Rocky Mountains," The painter has caught

94 GREATER JRRITAtN, [CHAP. Xltt

the forms, but missed the atmosphere of the range : the clouds
and mists are those of Maine and Massachusetts ; there is
colour more vivid, darkness more lurid, in the storms of
Colorado.

This was our first sight of the main range since we entered
the Rlrfck Hills, although we passed through the gorges at the
very foot of Long's Peak. It was not till we had reached the
rolling hills of Medecine Bow — a hundred miles beyond the
peak — that we once more caught sight of it shining in the rear.

In the night between the second and third days, the frost
was so bitter, at the great altitude to which we had attained,
that we resorted to every expedient to keep out the cold.
While I was trying to peg down one of the leathern flaps of our
ambulance with the pencil from my note-book, my eye caught
the moonlight on the ground, and I drew back saying " We are
on the snow." The next time we halted, I found that what I
had seen was an impalpable white dust, the much dreaded
alkali.

In the morning of the third day we found ourselves in a
country of dazzling white, dotted with here and there a tuft of
sage-brush — an Artemisia akin to that of the Algerian highlands.
At last we were in the "American desert" — the "Mauvaises
ferres."

Once only did we escape for a time from alkali and sage to
sweet waters and sweet grass. Near Bridger's Pass and the
" divide " between Atlantic and Pacific floods, we came on a
long valley swept by chilly breezes, and almost unfit for human
habitation from the rarefaction of the air, but blessed with
pasture ground on which domesticated herds of Himalayan
yak should one day feed. Settlers in Utah will find out that
this animal, which would flourish here at altitudes of from 4000
to 14,000 feet, and which bears the most useful of all furs, re-
quires less herbage in proportion to its weight and size than
almost any animal we know.

This Bridger's Pass route is that by which the telegraph lint
runs, and I was told by the drivers strange stories of the Indians
ind their views on this great Medecine. They never destroy
out of mere wantonness, but have been known to cut the wire
and then lie in ambush in the neighbourhood, in the expectation

. xm.1 ROCK? stotnrTAnrs. 95

that repairing parties would arrive and fall an easy prey.
Having come one morning upon three armed overlandeis lying
fast asleep, while a fourth kept guard, by a fire which coincided
with a gap in the posts, but which was far from any timber or
even scrub. I have my doubts as to whether " white Indians "
have not much to do with the destruction of the line.

From one of the uplands of the Artemisia barrens we sighted
at once Fremont's Peak on the north, and another great snow-
dome on the south. The unknown mountain was both the
more distant and the loftier of the two, yet the maps mark no
chain within eyeshot to the southward. The country on either
side of this well-worn track is still as little known as when
Captain Stansbury explored it in 1850 ; and when we crossed
the Green River, as the Upper Colorado is called, it was strange
to remember that the stream is here lost in a thousand miles of
midiscovered wilds, to be found again flowing towards Mexico.
Near the ferry is the place where Albert S. Johnson's mule
trains were captured by the Mormons under General Lot
Smith.

In the middle of the night we would come upon mule-trains
starting on their march in order to avoid the mid-day sun, and
thus save water, which they are sometimes forced to carry with
them for as much as fifty miles. When we found them halted,
they were always camped on bluffs and in bends, far from rocks
and tufts, behind which the Indians might creep and stampede
the cattle : this they do by suddenly swooping down with fear-
ful noises, and riding in among the mules or oxen at full speed.
The beasts break away in their fright, and are driven off before
the sentries have time to turn out the camp.

On the fourth day from Denver Ihe scenery was tame enough,
but strange in the extreme. Its characteristic feature was its
breadth. No longer the rocky defiles of Virginia Dale, no
longer the glimpses of the main range as from Laramie Plains
and the foot hills of Medecine Bow, but great rolling downs
like those of the Plains much magnified. We crossed one of
the highest open passes in the world without seeing snow, but
looked back directly we were through it on snow-fields behind
us and all around.

At Elk Mountain we suffered greatly from the frost, but by

<*> GREATER BSTTAIN. [CHAP, xiu,

mid-day we were taking off our coats, and the mules hanging
their heads in the sun once more, while those which should
have taken their places were, as the ranchman expressed it,
" kicking their heels in pure cussedness " at a stream some ten
miles away.

While walking before the " hack " through the burning sand
of Bitter Creek, I put up a bird as big as a turkey, which must,
1 suppose, have been a vulture. The sage-brush growing here
as much as three feet high, and as stout and gnarled as century-
oid heather, gave shelter to a few coveys of sage-hens, at which
we shot without much success, although they seldom ran, and
never rose. Their colour is that of the brush itself — a yellowish
grey — and it is as hard to see them as to pick up a partridge
on a sun-dried fallow at home in England. Of wolves and
rattlesnakes there were plenty, but of big game we saw but
little, only a few black-tails in the day.

This track is more travelled by trains than is the Smoky Hill
route, which accounts for the absence of game on the line ; but
that there is plenty close at hand is clear from the way we were
fed. Smoky Hill starvation was forgotten in piles of steaks of
elk and antelope ; but still no fruit, no vegetable, no bread, no
drink save "sage-brush tea," and that half poisoned with the
water of the alkaline creeks.

Jerked buffalo had disappeared from our meals. The droves
never visit the Sierra Madre now, and scientific books have said
that in the mountains they were ever unknown. In Bridger's
Pass we saw the skulls of not less than twenty buffalo, which is
proof enough that they once were here, though perhaps long
ago. The skin and bones will last about a year after the beast
has died, for the wolves tear them to pieces to get at the marrow
within, but the skull they never touch ; and the oldest ranch-
man failed to give me an answer as to how long skulls and
horns might last. We saw no buffalo roads like those across
the Plains.

From the absence of buffalo, absence of birds, absence of
flowers, absence even of Indians, the Rocky Mountain plateau
is more of a solitude than are the Plains. It takes days to see
this; for you naturally notice it less. On the Plains, the glorious
climate, the masses of rich blooming plants, the millions of

CHAP, mi.] ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 97

beasts, and insects, and birds, all seem prepared to the hand of
man, and for man you are continually searching. Each time
you round a hill, you look for the smoke of the farm. Here on
the mountains you feel as you do on the sea : it is nature's own
solitude, but from no fault of ours — the higher parts of the
plateau were not made for man.

Early on the fifth night we dashed suddenly out of utter
darkness into a mountain glen blazing with fifty fires, and per-
fumed with the scent of burning cedar. As many wagons as
there were fires were corralled in an ellipse about the road, and
600 cattle were pastured within the fire-glow in rich grass that
told of water. Men and women were seated round the camp-
fires praying and singing hymns. As we drove in, they rose and
cheered us " on your way to Zion !" Our Gentile driver yelled
back the war-whoop " How ! How ! How ! How — w ! We'll give
yer love to Brigham ;" and back went the poor travellers to their
prayers again. It was a bull-train of the Mormon immigration.

Five minutes after we had passed the camp we were back in
civilization, and plunged into polygamous society all at once,
with Bishop Myers, the keeper of Bear River ranch,* drawing
water from the well, while Mrs. Myers No. i cooked the chops,
and Mrs. Myers No. 2 laid the table neatly.

The kind Bishop made us sit before the fire till we were
warm, and filled our " hack " with hay, that we might continue
so, and off we went, inclined to look favourably on polygamy
after such experience of polygamists.

Leaving Bear River about midnight, at two o'clock in the
morning of the sixth day we began the descent of Echo Can
on, the grandest of all the gully passes of the Wasatch Range
The night was so clear that I was able to make some outline
sketches of the cliffs from the ranch where we changed mules
Echo Canon is the Thermopylae of Utah, the pass that the
Mormons fortified against the United States' forces under Albert
S Johnson at the time of " Buchanan's raid." Twenty-six
miles long, often not more than a few yards wide at the bottom,
and a few hundred feet at the top, with an overhanging cliff on
the north side, and a mountain wall on the south, E«:ho Canoo
would be no easy pass to force.

* Now the site of a large town.

98 G&EATER BttTTATN. LCHAP. till.

After breakfast at Coalville, the Mormon Newcastle, situated
in a smiling valley not unlike that between Martigny and Saint
Maurice, we dashed on past Kimball's ranch, where we once
more hitched horses instead of mules, and began our descent
of seventeen miles down Big Canon, the best of all the passes
of the Wasatch. Rounding a spur at the end of our six-hun-
dredth raile from Denver, we first sighted the Mormon promised
land.

The sun was setting over the great dead lake to our right,
lighting up the valley with a silvery gleam from Jordan River,
and the hills with a golden glow from off the snow-fields of the
many mountain chains and peaks around. In our front, the
Oquirrh, or Western Range, stood out in sharp purple outlines
upon a sea-coloured sky. To our left were the Utah mountains,
blushing rose, and all about our heads the Wasatch glowing in
orange and gold. From the flat valley in the sunny distance
rose the smoke of many houses, the dust of many droves ; on
the bench-land of Ensign Peak, on the lake side, white houses
peeped modestly from among the peach-trees, and hinted the
presence of the city.

Here was Plato's table-land of the Atlantic isle — one great
field of corn and wheat, where only twenty years ago Fremont,
the Pathfinder, reported wheat and corn impossible.

CHAPTER XIV.

BRIGHAM YOUNG.

" I LOOK upon Moharaed and Brigham as the very best men
that God could send as ministers to those unto whom He sent
them," wrote Elder Frederick Evans, of the "Shaker "village of
New Lebanon, in a letter to us, inclosing another by way of
introduction to the Mormon president.

Credentials from the Shaker to the Monr:oc chief — from the
great living exponent of the principle of celibacy to the " most
married man" in all America — were not to be kept undelivered ;
so the moment we had bathed we posted off to a merchant to
whom we had letters, that we might inquire when his spiritual
chief and military ruler would be home again from his " trip
north." The answer was, " To-morrow."

After watching the last gleams fade from the snow-fields upon
the Wasatch, we parted for the night, as I had to sleep in a
private house, the hotel being filled even to the balcony. As I
entered the drawing-room of my entertainer, I heard the voice
of a lady reading, and caught enough of what she said to be
aware that it was a defence of polygamy. She ceased when
she saw the stranger ; but I found that it was my host's first
wife reading Belinda Pratt's book to her daughters — girls just
blooming into womanhood.

After an agreeable chat with the ladies, doubly pleasant as it
followed upon a long absence from civilization, I went to my
room, which I afterwards found to be thaf of the eldest son, a
youth of sixteen years. In one corner stood two Ballard rifles,
and two revolvers and a militia uniform hung from pegs upon
the wall. When I lay down with my hands underneath the
pillow — an attitude instinctively adopted to escape the sand-

H 3

roo GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. Xiv.

flies, I touched something cold. I felt it — a full-sized Colt, and
capped. Such was my first introduction to Utah Mormonism.

On the morrow, we had the first and most formal of our four
interviews with the Mormon president, the conversation lasting
three hours, and all the leading men of the Church being present
When we rose to leave, Brigham said : " Come to see me here
again : Brother Stenhouse will show you everything ;" and then
blessed us in these words : " Peace be with you, in the name of
the Lord Jesus Christ."

Elder Stenhouse followed us out of the presence, and some-
what anxiously put the odd question : " Well, is he a white
man ?" " White " is used in Utah as a general term of praise :
a white man is a man — to use our corresponding idiom — not
so black as he is painted. A " white country " is a country
with grass and trees ; just as a white man means a man who is
morally not a Ute, so a white country is a land in which others
than Utes can dweH.

We made some complimentary answer to Stenhouse's question;
but it was impossible not to feel that the real point was : Is
Brigham sincere ?

Brigham's deeds have been those of a sincere man. His
bitterest opponents cannot dispute the fact that in 1844, when
Nauvoo was about to be deserted, owing to the attacks of a
ruffianly mob, Brigham rushed to the front, and took the chief
command. To be a Mormon leader then was to be a leader of
an outcast people, with a price set on his head, in a Missourian
county in which almost every man who was not a Mormon was
by profession an assassin. In the sense, too, of believing that he
is what he professes to be, Brigham is undoubtedly sincere. In
the wider sense of being that which he professes to be he comes
off as well, if only we will read his words in the way he speaks
them. He tells us that he is a prophet — God's representative
on earth ; but when I asked him whether he was of a wholly
different spiritual rank to that held by other devout men, he
said : " By no means. I am a prophet — one of many. All good
men are prophets ; but God has blessed me with peculiar favour
in revealing His will oftener and more clearly through me than
through other men."

Those who would understand Brigham's revelations must

CHAP xiv.] BRIGHAM 70UNQ. 101

read Benthara. The leading Mormons are utilitarian deists.
" God's will be done," they, like other deists, say is to be our
rule ; and God's will they find in written Revelation and in
Utility. God has given men, by the actual hand of angels, the
Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Book of Covenants, the revela-
tions upon Plural Marriage. When these are exhausted, man,
seeking for God's will, has to turn to the principle of Utility :
that which is for the happiness of mankind — that is, of the
Church — is God's will, and must be done. While Utility is
their only index to God's pleasure, they admit that the Church
must be ruled — that opinions may differ as to what is the good
of the Church, and therefore the will of God. They meet, then,
annually, in an assembly of the people, and electing Church
officers by popular will and acclamation, they see God's finger
in the ballot-box. They say, like the Jews in the election of
their judges, that the choice of the people is the choice of God.
This is what men like John Taylor or Daniel Wells appear to
feel ; the ignorant are permitted to look upon Brigham as some-
thing more than man, and though Brigham himself does nothing
to confirm this view, the leaders foster the delusion. When I
asked Stenhouse, " Has Brigham's re-election as Prophet ever
been opposed ?" he answered sharply, " I should like to see
the man who'd do it."

Brigham's personal position is a strange one : he calls himself
Prophet, and declares that he has revelations from God himself,
but when you ask him quietly what all this means, you find that
for Prophet you should read Political Philosopher. He sees
that a canal from Utah Lake to Salt Lake Valley would be of
vast utility to the Church and people — that a new settlement is
urgently required. He thinks about these things till they
dominate in his mind, and take in his brain the shape of physical
creations. He dreams of the canal, the city ; sees them before
him in his waking moments. That which is so clearly for the
good of God's people, becomes God's will. Next Sunday at the
Tabernacle, he steps to the front, and says : " God has spoken ;
He has said unto His prophet, 'Get thee up, Brigham, and
build Me a city in the fertile valley to the South, where there is
Abater, where there are fish, where the sun is strong enough to
ripen the cotton plants, and give raiment as we.ll as food to my

102 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. irv,

saints on earth.' Brethren willing to aid God's work should
come to me before the Bishops' meeting." As the Prophet
takes his seat again, and puts on his broad-brimmed hat, a hum
of applause runs round the bowery, and teams and barrows are
freely promised.

Sometimes the canal, the bridge, the city may prove a failure,
but this is not concealed : the Prophet's human tongue may
blunder even when he is communicating holy things.

"After all," Brigham said to me the day before I left, "the
highest inspiration is good sense — the knowing what to do, and
how to do it."

In all this it is hard for us, with our English hatred of casuistry
and hair-splitting, to see sincerity; still, given his foundation,
Brigham is sincere. Like other political religionists, he must
feel himself morally bound to stick at nothing when the interests
of the Church are at stake. To prefer man's life or property to
the service of God must be a crime in such a Church. The
Mormons deny the truth of the murder-stories alleged against
the Danites, but they avoid doing so in sweeping or even general
terms — though, if need were, of course they would be bound to
lie as well as to kill in the name of God and His holy prophet.

The secret polity vhich I have sketched gives, evidently,
enormous power to some one man within the Church : but the
Mormon constitution does not very clearly point out who that
man shall be. With a view to the possible future failure of
leaders of great personal qualifications, the First Presidency
consists of three members with equal rank ; but to his place in
the Trinity, Brigham unites the office of Trustee in Trust, which
gives him the control of the funds and tithing, or Church
taxation.

All are not agreed as to what should be Brigham's place in
Utah. Stenhouse said one day : " I am one of those who
think that our President should do everything. He has made
this Church and this country, and should have his way in
all things ; saying so gets me into trouble with some." * The
writer of a report of Brigham's tour, which appeared in the
Salt Lake Telegraph the day we reached the city, used the

* The influence of his first wife has since made Mr. Stenhouse leave and
attack the Mormon Church.

CHAP, xiv.] BEIGHAM YOUNG. 103

words: "God never spoke through man more clearly than
through President Young."

One day, when Stenhouse was speaking of the morality of
the Mormon people, he said : " Our penalty for adultery is
death." Remembering the Danites, we were down on him at
once : " Do you inflict it ? " " No ; but — well, not practically;
but really it is so. A man who commits adultery withers away
and perishes. A man sent away from his wives upon a mission
that may last for years, if he lives not purely — if, when he
returns, he cannot meet the eye of Brigham, better for him to
be at once in hell. He withers."

Brigham himself has spoken in strong words of his own
power over the Mormon people : " Let the talking folk at
Washington say, if they please, that I am no longer Governor
of Utah. I am, and will be Governor, until God Almighty
says, ' Brigham, you need not be Governor any more. ' '

Brigham's head is that of a man who nowhere could be
secon'1

104 GREATER BRIT.UX. \Ctiur. 17,

CHAPTER XV:

MORMONDOM.

WE had been presented at court, and favourably received;
asked to call again ; admitted to State secrets of the presi-
dency. From this moment our position in the city was secured.
Mormon seats in the theatre were placed at our disposal ; the
director of immigration, the presiding bishop, Colonel Hunter
— a grim, weather-beaten Indian fighter — and his coadjutors
carried us off to see the reception of the bull-train at the
Elephant Corral; we were offered a team to take us to the
Lake, which we refused only because we had already accepted
the loan of one from a Gentile merchant ; presents of peaches
and invitations to lunch, dinner, and supper, came pouring in
upon us from all sides. In a single morning we were visited
by four of the Apostles and nine other leading members of the
Church. Ecclesiastical dignitaries sat upon our single chair
and wash-hand-stand ; and one bed groaned under the weight
of George A. Smith, " Church historian," * while the other bore
^Esop's load — the peaches he had brought. These growers of
fruit from standard trees think but small things of our English
wall-fruit, " baked on one side, and frozen on the other," as they
say. There is a mellowness about the Mormon peaches that
would drive our gardeners to despair.

One of our callers was Captain Hooper, the Utah delegate
to Congress. He is an adept at the Western plan of getting
out of a fix b,y telling you a story. When we laughingly alluded
to his lack of wives, and the absurdity of a monogamist repre-
senting Utah, he said that the people at Washington all believed
• Succeeded Brigham as " Trustee in Trust " in 1874, and died in 1875,

cm r. r.v.-] MORMONDOM. 105

that Utah had sent them a polygamist. There is a rule that no
one with the entry shall take more than one lady to the White
House receptions. A member of Congress was urged by three
ladies to take them with him. He, as men do, said, " The
thing is impossible " — and did it Presenting himself with the
bevy at the door, the usher stopped him : " Can't pass ; only
one friend admitted with each member." "Suppose, sir, that
I'm the delegate from Utah territory ? " said the Congress-man.
" Oh, pass in, sir — pass in," was the instant answer of the
usher. The story reminds me of poor Browne's " family "
ticket to his lecture at Salt Lake City : " Admit the bearer and
one wife." Hooper is said to be under pressure at this moment
on the question of polygamy, for he is a favourite with the
Prophet, who cannot, however, with consistency promote him
to office in the Church on account of a saying of his own : " A
man with one wife is of less account before God than a man
with no wives at all."*

Our best opportunity of judging of the Mormon ladies was
at the theatre, which we attended regularly, sitting now in Eldei
Stenhouse's "family" seats, now with General Wells. Here
we saw the wives of the leading Churchmen of the city; in
their houses, we saw only those they chose to show us : in no
case but that of the Clawson family did we meet in society all
the wives. We noticed at once that the leading ladies were all
alike — full of taste, full of sense, but full, at the same time, of
a kind of unconscious melancholy. Everywhere, as you looked
round the house, you met the sad eye which I had seen but
once before — among the Shakers at New Lebanon. The women
here, knowing no other state, seem to think themselves as happy
as the day is long : their eye alone is there to show the Gentile
that they are, if the expression may be allowed, unhappy with-
out knowing it. That these Mormon women love their religion
and reverence its priests is but a consequence of its being "their
religion " — the system in the midst of which they have been
brought up. Who of us is there that does not set up some idol
in his heart round which he weaves all that he has of poetry
and devotion in his character? — art, hero-worship, patriotism
* Captain Hooper has since married other wives.

io6 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP, xv,

are forms of this great tendency. That the Mormon girls, who
are educated as highly as those of any country in the world —
who, like all American girls, are allowed to wander where they
please — who are certain of protection in any of the fifty Gentile
houses in the city, and absolutely safe in Camp Douglas at the
distance of two miles from the city wall — all consent delibe-
rately to enter on polygamy, shows clearly enough that they
can, as a rule, have no dislike to it beyond such a feeling as
public opinion will speedily overcome.

Discussion of the institution of plural marriage in Salt Lake
City is fruitless ; all that can be done is to observe. In assault-
ing the Mormon citadel, you strike against the air. "Polygamy
degrades the woman," you begin. " Morally or socially ? " says
the Mormon. " Socially." " Granted," is the reply, " and
that is a most desirable consummation. By socially lowering,
it morally raises the woman. It makes her a servant, but it
makes her pure and good."

It is always well to remember that if we have one argument
against polygamy which from our Gentile point of view is
unanswerable, it is not necessary that we should rack our brains
for others. All our modern experience is favourable to rank-
ing woman as man's equal ; polygamy assumes that she shall
be his servant — loving, faithful, cheerful, willing, but still a
servant.

The opposite poles upon the women question are Utah poly-
gamy and Wyoming female suffrage.

CHAPTER XVI.
WESTERN EDITORS.

THE attack upon Mormondom has been systematized and is
conducted with military skill, by trench and parallel. The
New England papers having called for "facts" whereon to
base their homilies, General Connor, of Fenian fame, set up
the Union Vedette in Salt Lake City, and publishes on Saturdays
a sheet expressly intended for Eastern reading. The mantle of
the Sangamo Journal has fallen on the Vedette, and John C.
Bennett is effaced by Connor. From this source it is that
come the whole of the paragraphs against Brigham and all
Mormondom which fill the Eastern papers, and find their way
to London. The editor has to cram his paper with peppery
leaders, well-spiced telegrams, stinging " facts." Every week
there must be something that can be used and quoted against
Brigham. The Eastern remarks upon quotations are in turn
quoted at Salt Lake. Under such circumstances, even tele-
grams can be made to take a flavour. In to-day's Vedette we
have one from St. Joseph, describing how above one thousand
" of these dirty, filthy dupes of the Great Salt Lake iniquity "
are now squatting round the packet depot, awaiting transport.
Another from Chicago tells us that the seven thousand Euro-
pean Mormons who have this year passed up the Missouri
river " are of the lowest and most ignorant classes." The
leader is directed against Mormons in general, and Stenhouse
in particular, as editor of one of the Mormon papers, and ex-
postmaster of the territory. He has already had cause to fear
the Vedette, as it was through the exertions of its editor that he
lost his office. This matter is referred to in the leader ol
to-day: "When we found our letters scattered about the

108 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xvi.

streets in fragments, we succeeded in getting an honest post-
master appointed in place of the editor of the Telegraph — an
organ where even carrots, pumpkins, and potatoes are current
funds — directed by a clique of foreign writers, who can hardly
speak our language, and who never drew a loyal breath since
they came to Utah." The Mormon tax frauds, and the
Mormon police, likewise come in for their share of abuse,
and the writer concludes with a pathetic plea against arrest
" for quietly indulging in a glass of wine in a private room
with a friend."

Attacks such as these make one understand the suspicious-
ness of the Mormon leaders, and the slowness of Stenhouse
and his friends to take a joke if it concerns the Church.
Artemus Ward once wrote to Stenhouse, " Ef you can't take
a joke, you'll be darned, and you oughter;" but the jest at
which he can laugh has wrought no cure. Heber Kimball

said to me one day: "They're all alike. There was

came here to write a book, and we thought better of him
than of most. I showed him more kindness than I ever
showed a man before or since, and then he called me a ' hoary
reprobate.' I would advise him not to pass this way next
time."

The suspicion often takes odd shapes. One Sunday morning,
at the tabernacle, I remarked that the Prophet's daughter, Zina,
had on the same dress as she had worn the evening before at
the theatre, in playing " Mrs. Musket " in the farce of " My
Husband's Ghost." It was a black silk gown, with a Vandyke
flounce of white, impossible to mistake. I pointed it out in
joke to a Mormon friend, when he denied my assertion in the
most emphatic way, although he could not have known for
certain that I was wrong.

The Mormons will talk freely of their own suspiciousness.
They say that the coldness with which travellers are usually
received at Salt Lake City is the consequence of years of total
misrepresentation. They forget that they are arguing in a circle,
and that this misrepresentation is itself sometimes the result of
their reserve.

The news and advertisements are even more amusing than
the leaders in the Vedette. A paragraph tells us, for instance,

vi.] WESTERN EDITORS. log

that "Mrs. Martha Stewart and Mrs. Robertson, of San
Antonio, lately had an impromptu fight with revolvers ; Mrs.
Stewart was badly winged." Nor is this the only reference in
the paper to shooting by ladies, as another paragraph relates
how a young girl, frightened by a sham ghost, drew on the
would-be apparition, and with six barrels shot him twice
through the head, and four times " in the region of the heart."
A quotation from the Qwyhee Avalanche, speaking of gambling
hells, tells us that " one hurdy shebang " in Silver City shipped
8000 dollars as the net proceeds of its July business. " These
Jeeches corral more clear cash than most quartz mills," remon-
strates the editor. " Corral " is the Mexican cattle inclosure ;
the yard where the team mules are ranched ; the kraal of Cape
Colony, which, on the Plains and the Plateau, serves as a fort
for men as well as a fold for oxen, and resembles the serai of
the East The word " to corral " means to shut into one of
these pens ; and thence " to pouch," " to pocket," " to bag,"
to get well into hand.

The advertisements are in keeping with the news. " Every-
thing, from a salamander safe to a Limerick fish-hook," is
offered by one firm. " Fifty-three and a half and three and
three-quarter thimble-skein Schuttler wagons," is offered by
another. An advertiser bids us " Spike the Guns of Humbug !
and Beware of Deleterious Dyes ! Refuse to have your Heads
Baptized with Liquid Fire ! " Another says, " If you want a
paper free from entanglements of cliques, and antagonistic to
the corrupting evils of factionism, subscribe to the Montana
Radiator" Nothing beats the following : " Butcher's dead-shot
for bed-bugs 1 Curls them up as fire does a leaf ! Try it, and
sleep in peace I Sold by all live druggists."

If we turn to the other Salt Lake papers, the Telegraph, an
independent Mormon paper, and the Deseret News, the official
journal of the Church, we find a contrast to the trash of the
Vedette. Brigham's paper, clearly printed and of a pleasant
size, is filled with the best and latest news from the outlying
portions of the territory, and from Europe. The motto on its
head is a simple one — " Truth and Liberty ;" and twenty-eight
columns of solid news are given us. Among the items is an
account of a fight upon the Smoky Hill route, which occurred

llo GREATER BRITAlUf. [CHAP. JtVi

on the day we reached this city, and in which two teamsters —
George Hill and Luke West — were killed by the Kiowas and
Cheyennes. A loyal Union article from the pen of Albert
Carrington, the editor, is followed by one upon the natural
advantages of Utah, in which the writer complains that the
very men who ridiculed the Mormons for settling in a desert
are now declaiming against their being allowed to squat upon
one of the " most fertile locations in the United States." The
paper asserts that Mormon success is secured only by Mormon
industry, and that as a merely commercial ' speculation, apart
from the religious impulse, the cultivation of Utah would not.
pay : " Utah is no place for the loafer or the lazy man." An
official report, like the Court Circular of England, is headed,
" President Brigham Young's trip North," and is signed by
G. D. Watt, " Reporter" to the Church. The Old Testament
is not spared. " From what we saw of the timbered moun-
tains," writes one reporter, " we had no despondency of Israel
ever failing for material to build up, beautify, and adorn plea-
sant habitations in that part of Zion." A theatrical criticism is
not wanting, and the Church actors come in for " praise all
around." In another part of the paper are telegraphic reports
from the captains of the seven immigrant trains not yet come
in, giving their position, and details of the number of days'
march for which they have provisions still in hand. One
reports " thirty-eight head of cattle stolen ; " another, " a good
deal of mountain fever ; " but, on the whole, the telegrams look
well. The editor, speaking of the two English visitors now in
the city, says : " We greet them to our mountain habitation,
and bid them welcome to our orchard ; and that's considerable
for an editor, especially if he has plural responsibilities to look
after." Bishop Harrington reports from American Fork that
everybody is thriving there, and " doing as the Mormon creed
directs — minding their own business." " That's good, Bishop,"
says the editor. The " Passenger List of the 2nd Ox Train,
Captain J. D. Holladay," is given at length ; about half the
immigrants come with wife and family, very many with five or
six children. From Liverpool, the chief office for Europe,
comes a gazette of " Releases and Appointments," signed
" Brigham Young, Jun., President of the Church of Jesus

CHAP, xn.] WESTERN EDIlVltS. ttl

Christ of Latter-day Saints in the British Isles and Adjacent
Countries," accompanied by a despatch, in which the " Presi-
dent for England " gives details of his visits to the Saints in
Norway, and of his conversations with the United States' minister
at St. Petersburg.

The Telegraph, like its editor, is practical, and does not deal
in extract. All the sheet, with the exception of a few columns,
is taken up with business advertisements ; but these are not the
least amusing part of the paper. A gigantic figure of a man in
high boots and felt hat, standing on a ladder and pasting up
Messrs. Eldredge and Clawson's dry-goods advertisement, occu-
pies nearly half the back page. Mr. Birch informs " parties
hauling wheat from San Pete county " that his mill at Fort Birch
" is now running, is protected by a stone-wall fortification, and
is situate at th* mouth of Salt Canyon, just above Nephi City,
Juab County, on the direct road to Pahranagat." A view of
the fort, with posterns, parapets, embrasures, and a giant flag,
heads the advertisement. The cuts are not always so cheerful :
one Far-Western paper fills three-quarters of its front page with
an engraving of a coffin. The editorial columns contain calls
to the " brethren with teams " to aid the immigrants, an account
of a " rather mixed case " of " double divorce " (Gentile), and
of a prosecution of a man "for violation of the seventh com-
mandment." A Mormon police report is headed " One drunk
at the Calaboose." Defending himself against charges of
" directing bishops " and " steadying the ark," the editor calls
on the bishops to shorten their sermons : "we may get a crack
for this, but we can't help it. We like variety, life, and short
meetings." In a paragraph about his visitors, our friend the
editor of the Telegraph said, a day or two after our arrival in
the city : " If a stranger can escape the strychnine clique for
three days after arrival, he is for ever afterwards safe. Generally
the first twenty-four hours are sufficient to prostrate even the
very robust." In a few words of regret at a change in the
Denver newspaper staff our editor says : " However, a couple
of sentences indicate that George has no intention of abandon-
ing the tripod. That's right : keep at it, my boy ; misery likes
company."

The day after we reached Denver, the Gazette, commentir g

m QttEATBR BRITAIN. ICHAP. xn

on this same " George," said : " Captain West has left the
Rocky Mountains' News Office. We are not surprised, as we
could never see how any respectable decent gentleman like
George could get along with Governor Evans' paid hireling and
whelp who edits that delectable sheet." Of the two papers
which exist in every town in the Union, each is always at work
attempting to " use up " the other. I have seen the democratic
print of Chicago call its republican opponent "a radical, dis-
union, disreputable, bankrupt, emasculated evening newspaper
concern of this city " — a string of terms by the side of which
even Western utterances pale.

A paragraph headed " The Millennium " tells us that the
editors of the Telegraph and Deseret News were seen yesterday
afternoon walking together towards the Twentieth Ward.
Another paragraph records the ill success of an expedition
against Indians who had been "raiding" down in "Dixie," or
South Utah. A general order signed " Lieut. -General Daniel
H. Wells," and dated " Head-quarters, Nauvoo Legion," directs
the assembly, for a three days' " big drill," of the forces of the
various military districts of the territory. The name of " Ter-
ritorial Militia," under which alone the United States can permit
the existence of the legion, is carefully omitted. This is not
the only warlike advertisement in the paper : fourteen cases of
Ballard rifles are offered in exchange for cattle ; and other firms
offer tents and side-arms to their friends. Amusements are not
forgotten : a cricket match between two Mormon settlements
in Cache county is recorded, " Wellsville whipping Brigham
city with six wickets to go down ;" and is followed by an article
in which the First President may have had a hand, pointing out
that the Salt Lake Theatre is going to be the greatest of thea-
tres, and that the favour of its audience is a passport beyond
Wallack's, and equal to Drury Lane or the Haymarket. In
sharp contrast to these signs of present prosperity, the First
Presidency announce the annual gathering of the surviving
members of Zion's camp, the association of the first immigrant
band.

There is about the Mormon papers much that tells of long
settlement and prosperity. When I showed Stenhouse the
Denver Gazette of our second day in that town, he said : " Well,

WESTERN EDITORS. nj

better than that !" The Denver sheet is a literary
cunosity of the first order. Printed on chocolate- coloured
paper, in ink of a not much darker hue, it is in parts illegible —
to the reader's regret, for what we were able to make out was
good enough to make us wish for more.

The difference between the Mormon and Gentile papers is
strongly marked in the advertisements. The Denver Gazette is
filled with puffs of quacks and whisky-shops. In the column
headed " Business Cards," we have the card of " Dr. Treat,
Eclectic Physician and Surgeon," which is preceded by an
advertisement of " Sulkies made to Order," and followed by
a leaded heading, " Know thy Destiny : Madame Thornton,
the English Astrologist and Psychometrician, has located her-
self at Hudson, New York ; by the aid of an instrument of
intense power, known as the Psychomotrope, she guarantees to
produce a lifelike picture of the future husband or wife of the
applicant." There is a strange turning towards the supernatural
among this people. Astrology is openly professed as a science
throughout the United States; the success of spiritualism is
amazing. The most sensible men are not exempt from the
weakness : the dupes of the astrologers are not the uneducated
Irish ; they are the strong-minded, half-educated Western men,
shrewd and keen in trade, brave in war, material and cold in
faith, it would be supposed, but credulous to folly, as we know,
when personal revelation, the supernaturalism of the present
day, is set before them in the crudest and least attractive forms.
A little lower, " Charley Eyser " and " Gus Fogus " advertise
their bars. The latter announces " Lager beer at only 10 cents,"
in a " cool retreat," " fitted up with green-growing trees." A re-
turned warrior heads his announcement, in huge capitals, " Back
Home Again, an Old Hand at the Bellows, the Soldier Black-
smith : — S. M. Logan." In a country where weights and mea-
sures are rather a matter of practice than of law, Mr. O'Connell
does well to add to " Lager beer 15 cents," " Glasses hold Two
Bushels." John Morris, of the " Little Giant " or " Theatre
Saloon," asks us to " call and see him ;" while his rivals of the
"Progressive Saloon" offer the "finest liquors that the East
can command.1* Morris Sigi, whose " lager is pronounced
A No. i by all who have used it," bids us " give him a fair trial

ri4 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xvr.

and satisfy ourselves as to the false reports in circulation."
Daniel Marsh, dealer in " breech-loading guns and revolvers,"
adds, " and anything that may be wanted, from a cradle to a
coffin, both inclusive, made to order. An Indian Lodge on
view, for sale." This is the man at whose shop scalps hang for
sale; but he fails to say so in his advertisement: the Utes
brought them in too late for insertion, perhaps.

Advertisements of freight-trains now starting to the East, of
mail coaches to Buckskin Joe — advertisements slanting, topsy-
turvy, and sideways turned — complete the outer sheet; but
some of them, through bad ink, printer's errors, strange English,
and wilder Latin, are wholly unintelligible. It is hard to make
much of this, for instance : " Mr. ^sculapius, no offense, I hope,
as this is written extempore and ipso facto. But, perhaps, I ought
not to disregard ex unci disce omnes."

In an editorial on the English visitors then in Denver, the
chance of putting into their mouths a puff of the territory of
Colorado was not lost We were made to "appreciate the
native energy and wealth of industry necessary in building up
such a Star of Empire as Colorado." The next paragraph is
communicated from Conejos, in the south of the territory, and
says : " The election has now passed off, and I am confident
that we can beat any ward in Denver, and give them two in the
game, for rascality in voting." Another leader calls on the
people of Denver to remember that there are two men in the
calaboose for mule-stealing, and that the last man locked up for
the offence was allowed to escape : some cottonwood trees still
exist, it believes. In former times, there was for the lynching
here hinted at a reason which no longer exists : a man shut up
in gaol built of adobe, or sun-dried brick, could scratch his way
through the crumbling wall in two days, so the citizens generally
hanged him in one. Now that the gaols are in brick and stone,
the job might safely be left to the sheriff; but the people of
Denver seem to trust themselves better even than they do their
delegate, Bob Wilson.

A year or two ago, the gaols were so crazy, that Coloradan
criminals, when given their choice wheth <sr they would be
hanged in a week, or " as soon after breakfast to-morrow as
shall be convenient to the sheriff and agreeable, Mr. Prisoner,

CHAP, xvi.1 WESTERN EDITORS. 115

to you," as the Texan formula runs, used to elect for the quick
delivery, on the ground that otherwise they would catch their
deaths of cold — at least, so the Denver story runs. They
have, however, a method of getting the gaols inspected here
which might be found useful at home : it consists in the simple
plan of giving the governor of a gaol an opportunity of seeing
the practical working of the system by locking him up inside
for a while.

These Far- Western papers are written or compiled under
difficulties almost overwhelming. Mr. Frederick J. Stanton,
at Denver, told me that often he had been forced to " set up "
and print as well as " edit " the paper which he owns. Type
is not always to be found. In its early days, the California
Alta once appeared with a paragraph which ran : " I have no
VV in my type, as there is none in the Span.sh alphabet. I
have sent to the Sandwich Islands for this letter ; in the
meantime we must use two Vs."

Till I had seen the editors' rooms in Denver, Austin, and
Salt Lake City, 1 had no conception of the point to which
discomfort could be carried. For all these hardships, payment
is small and slow. It consists often of little but the satisfaction
which it is to the editor's vanity to be " liquored " by the best
man of the place, treated to an occasional chat with the
governor of the territory, to a chair in the Overland Mail Office
whenever he walks in, to the hand of the hotel proprietor when
ever he comes near the bar, and to a pistol-shot once or twice
in a month.

It must not be supposed that the Vedette does the Mormons
no harm ; the perpetual reiteration in the Eastern and English
papers of three sets of stories alone would suffice to break down
a flourishing power. The three lines that are invariably taken
as foundations for their stories are these — that the Mormon
women are wretched, and would fain get away, but are checked
by the Danites ; that the Mormons are anxious to fight with
the Federal troops ; that robbery of the people by the apostles
and elders is at the bottom of Mormonism — or, as the Vedettt
puts it, " on tithing and loaning hang all the law and the profits."

If the mere fact of the existence of the Vedette effectually
refutes the stories of the acts of the Danites in these modern

i a

n6 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. XYI.

days, and therefore disposes of the first set of stories, the
third is equally answered by a glance at its pages. Columns
of paragraphs, sheets of advertisements, testify to the founda-
tion by industry, in the most frightful desert on earth, of an
agricultural community which California herself cannot match
The Mormons may well call their country " Deseret " — " land
of the bee." The process of fertilization goes on day by day.
Six or seven years ago, Southern Utah was a desert bare as
Salt Bush Plains. Irrigation from the fresh-water lake was
carried out under episcopal direction, and the result is the
growth of fifty kinds of grapes alone. Cotton mills and vine-
yards are springing up on every side, and " Dixie " begins to
look down on its parent, the Salt Lake Valley. Irrigation from
the mountain rills has done this miracle, we say, though the
Saints undoubtedly believe that God's hand is in it, helping
miraculously " His peculiar people."

In face of Mormon prosperity, it is worthy of notice that
Utah was settled on the Wakefieldian system, though Brigham
knows nothing of Wakefield. Town population and country
population grew up side by side in every valley, and the plough
was not allowed to gain on the machine-saw and the shuttle.

It is not only in water and verdure that Utah is naturally
poor. On the mining-map of the States, the countries that lie
around Utah — Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Montana — are one
blaze of yellow, and blue, and red, coloured from end to end
with the tints that are used to denote the existence of precious
metals. Utah is blank at present — blank, the Mormons say,
by nature ; Gentiles say, merely through the absence of survey;
and they do their best to circumvent mother nature. Every
fall the " strychnine " party raise the cry of gold discoveries in
Utah, in the hope of bringing a rush of miners down to Salt
Lake City, too late for them to get away again before the
snows begin. The presence of some thousands of braid-
brimmed rowdies in Salt Lake City, for a winter, would be the
death of Mormonism, they believe. Within the last few ddvs,
I am told that prospecting parties have found " pay dirt " in
City Canyon, which, however, they had first themselves care-
fully " salted * with gold-dust. There is coal at the settlement
at which we breakfasted on our way from Weber river to Salt

tv;.] WESTERN EDITORS. t^

Lake ; and Stenhouse tells us that the only difference between
the Utah coal and that of Wales is, that the latter will burn,
and the former won't J

Poor as Utah is by nature, clear though it be that whatever
value the soil now possesses, represents only the loving labour
bestowed upon it by the Saints, H is doubtful whether they are
to continue to possess it, even though the remaining string of
yedetfe-bom stories assert that Brigham " threatens hell " to the
Gentiles who would expel him.

The constant, teasing, wasp-like pertinacity of the Vedette has
do::e some harm to liberty of thought throughout the worl.I.

ii8 GREATER BRITAIN. TCHAP. xvn.

CHAPTER XVII
UTAH.

" WHEN you are driven hence, where shall you go ?"

" We take no thought for the morrow ; the Lord will guide
His people," was my rebuke from Elder Stenhouse, delivered in
the half-solemn, half-laughing manner characteristic of the
Saints. "You say miracles are past and gone," he went on;
" but if God has ever interfered to protect a Church, he has
interposed on our behalf. In 1857, when the whole army of
the United States was let slip at us under Albert S. Johnson,
we were given strength to turn them aside, and defeat them
without a blow. The Lord permitted us to dictate our own
terms of peace. Again, when the locusts came in such swarms
as to blacken the whole valley, and fill the air with a living fog,
God sent millions of strange new gulls, and these devoured the
locusts, and saved us from destruction. The Lord will guide
His people."

Often as I discussed the future of Utah and the Church with
Mormons, I could never get from them any answer but this ;
they would never even express a belief, as will many Western
Gentiles, that no attempt will be made to expel them from the
country they now hold. They cannot help seeing how imme-
diate is the danger : from the American press there comes a
cry, " Let us have this polygamy put down ; its existence is a
disgrace to England from which it springs, a shame to America
in which it dwells, to the Federal Government whose laws it
outrages and defies. How long will you continue to tolerate
this retrogression from Christianity, this insult to civilization?"
With the New Englanders, the question is political as well as
theological, personal as well as political — political, uiainty

CHAP. XVH.] UTAH. 119

because there is a great likeness between Mormon expressions
of belief in the divine origin of polygamy and the Southern
answers to the Abolitionists : " Abraham was a slave-owner,
and father of the faithful ;" " David, the best-loved of God was
a polygamist " — " show us a biblical prohibition of slavery ;"
" show us a denunciation of polygamy, and we'll believe you."
It is this similarity of the defensive positions of Mormonism
and slavery which has led to the present peril of the Salt Lake
Church : the New Englanders look on the Mormons, not only
as heretics, but as friends to the slave-owners ; on the other
hand, if you hear a man warmly praise the Mormons, you may
set him down as a Southerner, or at the least a Democrat.

Another reason for the hostility of New England is, that
while the discredit of Mormonism falls upon America, the
American people have but little share in its existence : a few of
the leaders are New Englanders and New Yorkers, but of the
rank and file, not one. In every ten immigrants, the mission-
aries count upon finding that four come from England, two
from Wales, one from the Scotch Lowlands, one from Sweden,
one from Switzerland, and one from Prussia : from Catholic
countries, none; from all America, none. It is through this
purely local and temporary association of ideas that we see the
strange sight of a party of tolerant, large-hearted Churchmen
eager to march their armies against a Church.

If we put aside for a moment the question of the moral right
to crush Mormonism in the name of truth, we find that it is, at
all events, easy enough to do it. There is no difficulty in
finding legal excuses for action — no danger in backing Federal
legislation with military force. The legal point is clear enough
— clear upon a double issue. Congress can legislate for the
territories in social matters — has, in fact, already done so.
Polygamy is at this moment punishable in Utah, but the law is,
pending the completion of the railroad, not enforced. Without
extraordinary action, its enforcement would be impossible, for
Mormon juries will give no verdict antagonistic to their Church;
but it is not only in this matter that the Mormons have been
offenders. They have sinned also against the land-laws of
America. The Church, Brigham, Kimball, all are landholders
on a scale not contemplated by the "Homestead" laws — unless

120 GREATER BRITAIN. [CH\P. TCYII

to be forbidden ; doubly, therefore, are the Mormons at the
mercy of the Federal Congress. There is a loop-hole open in
the matter of polygamy — that adopted by the New York
Communists when they chose each a woman to be his legal
wife, and so put themselves without the reach of law. This
method of escape, I have been assured by Mormon elders, is
one that nothing could force them to adopt. Rather than in-
directly destroy their Church by any such weak compliance,
they would again renounce their homes, and make their painful
way across the wilderness to some new Deseret.

It is not likely that New England interference will hinge upon
plurality. A " difficulty " can easily be made to arise upon the
land question, and no breach of the principle of toleration will,
on the surface at least, be visible. No surveys have been held
in the territory since 1857, no lands within the territorial limits
have been sold by the Federal land-office. Not only have the
limitations of the " Homestead " and " Pre-emption " laws been
disregarded, but Salt Lake City, with its palace, its theatre, and
hotels, is built upon the public lands of the United States. On
the other hand, Mexican titles are respected in Arizona and
New Mexico ; and as Utah was Mexican soil when, before the
treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the Mormons settled on its wastes,
it seems hard that their claims should not be equally respected.

After all, the theory of Spanish authority was a ridiculous
fiction. The Mormons were the first occupants of the country
which now forms the territories of Utah and Colorado and the
State of Nevada, and were thus annexed to the United States
without being in the least degree consulted. It is true that they
might be said to have occupied the country as American citizens,
and so to have carried American sovereignty with them into
the wilderness ; but this, again, is a European, not an American
theory. American citizens are such, not as men born upon a
certain soil, but as being citizens of a State of the Union, or
an organized Territory ; and though the Mormons may be said
to have accepted their position as citizens of the Territory of
Utah, still they did so on the understanding that it should
continue a Mormon country, where Gentiles should at the most
be barely tolerated.

We need not go further into the mazes of public law, or of

OTAP. XVM.] UTAH. in

ex post facto American enactments. The Mormons themselves
admit that the letter of the law is against them ; but say that
while it is claimed that Boston and Philadelphia may fitly
legislate for the Mormons three thousand miles away, because
Utah is a territory, not a State, men forget that it is Boston and
Philadelphia themselves who force Utah to remain a Territory,
although they admit the less populous Nebraska, Nevada, and
Oregon to their rights as States.

If, wholly excluding morals from the calculation, there can
be no doubt upon the points of law, there can be as little
upon the military question. Of the fifteen hundred miles of
waterless tract or desert that we crossed, seven hundred have
been annihilated, and 1869 may see the railroad track in the
streets of Salt Lake City.* This not only settles the military
question, but is meant to do so. When men lay four miles of a
railroad in a day, and average two miles a day for a whole
year, when a government bribes high enough to secure so
startling a rate of progress, there is something more than com-
merce or settlement in the wind. The Pacific railroad is not
merely meant to be the shortest line from New York to San
Francisco ; it is meant to put down Mormonism.

If the Federal Government decides to attack these peaceable
citizens of a Territory that should long since have been a State,
they certainly will not fight, and they no less surely will not
disperse. Polynesia or Mexico is their goal, and in the Mar-
quesas or in Sonora they may, perhaps, for a few years at least,
be let alone, again to prove the forerunners of English civilization
— planters of Saxon institutions and the English tongue ; once
more to perform their mission, as they performed it in Missouri
and in Utah.

When we turn from the simple legal question, and the still
more simple military one, to the moral point involved in the
forcible suppression of plural marriage in one State by the
might of all the others, we find the consideration of the matter
confused by the apparent analogy between the so-called crusade
against slavery and the proposed crusade against polygamy.
There is no real resemblance between the cases. In the
* It was so.

122 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xvn.

strictest sense, there was no more a crusade against slavery
than there is a crusade against snakes on the part of a man
who strikes one that bit him. The purest Republicans have
never pretended that the abolition of slavery was the justifica-
tion of the war. The South rose in rebellion, and in rising
gave New England an opportunity for the destruction in
America of an institution at variance with the republican form
of government, and aggressive in its tendencies. So far is
polygamy from being opposed in spirit to democracy, that it is
impossible here, in Salt Lake City, not to see that it is the
most levelling of all social institutions — Mormonism the most
democratic of religions. A rich man in New York leaves his
two or three sons large property, and founds a family ; a rich
Mormon leaves his twenty or thirty sons each a miserable
fraction of his money, and each son must trudge out into the
world, and toil for himself. Brigham's sons— -those of them
who are not gratuitously employed in hard service for the
Church in foreign parts — are cattle-drivers, small farmers, ranch-
men. One of them was the only poorly clad boy I saw in Salt
Lake City. A system of polygamy, in which all the wives,
and consequently all the children, are equal before the law, is a
powerful engine of democracy.

The general moral question of whether Mormonism is to be
put down, because the Latter-day Saints differ in certain social
customs from other Christians, is one for the preacher and the
casuist, not for a travelling observer of English-speaking
countries as they are. Mormonism comes under my observa-
tion as the religious and social system of the most successful of
all pioneers of English civilization. From this point of view
it would be an immediate advantage to the world that they
should be driven out once more into the wilderness, to found
an England in Mexico, in Polynesia, or on Red River. It
may be an immediate gain to civilization, but America herself
was founded by schismatics upon a basis of tolerance to all ;
and there are still to be found Americans who think it would
be the severest blow that has been dealt to liberty since the
St. Bartholomew, were she to lend her enormous power to
systematic persecution at the cannon's mouth.

The question of where to draw the line is one of interest

CHAP, xv i.] UTAH. 123

Great Britain draws it at black faces, and would hardly tolerate
the existence among her white subjects in London of such a
sect as that of the Maharajas of Bombay. " If you draw the
line at black faces," say the Mormons, " why should you not
let the Americans draw it at two thousand miles from
Washington?"

The moral question cannot be dissociated from Mormoi
history. The Saints marched from Missouri and Illinois, int<
no man's land, intending there to live out of the reach of thos(
who differed from them, as do the Russian dissenters trans
ported in past ages to the provinces of Taurida and Kherson
It is by no fault of theirs, they say, that they are citizens of th<
United States.

There is in the Far West a fast increasing party who would
leave people to be polygynists, polyandrists, Free-lovers, Shakers,
or monogamists, as they please ; who would place the social
relations as they have placed religion — out of the reach of the
law. I need hardly say that public opinion has such over
whelming force in America that it is probable that even undo
a system of perfect toleration by law, two forms of the family
relation would never be found existing side by side. Polyga
mists would continue to migrate to Mormon-land, Free-loven
to New York, Shakers to New England Some will find in thij
a reason for, and some a reason against, a change. In any case
a crusade against Mormonism will hardly draw sympathy from
Nebraska, from Michigan, from Kansas.

Many are found who say : " Leave Mormonism to itself, and
it will die." The Pacific railroad alone, they think, will kill it.
Those Americans who know Utah best are not of this opinion.
Mormonism is no superstition of the past. There is huge
vitality in the polygamic Church. Emerson once spoke to me
of Unitarianism, Buddhism, and Mormonism as three religions
which, right or wrong, are full of force. " The Mormons only
need to be persecuted," said Elder Frederick to me, " to become
as powerful as the Mohamedans." It is, indeed, more than
doubtful, whether polygamy can endure side by side with Ameri-
can monogamy — it is certain that Mormon priestly power and
Mormon mysteries cannot in the long run withstand the presence
of a large Gentile population ; but, if Mormon titles to land

224 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. XXVITL

America is becoming, not English merely, but world-embracing
in the variety of its type ; and, as the English element has given
language and history to that land, America offers the English
race the moral directorship of the globe, by ruling mankind
through Saxon institutions and the English tongue. Through
America, England is speaking to the world.

*• -<

>-. \ \

- -
c /

•

,*>

CHAPTER XVIII.
NAMELESS ALPS.

AT the Post Office in Main Street, I gave Mr. Dixon a few last
messages for home — he one to me for some Egyptian friends ;
and, with a shake and a wave, we parted, to meet in London
after between us completing the circuit of the globe.

This time again I was not alone : an Irish miner from
Montana, with a bottle of whisky, a revolver and pick, shared
the back seat with the mail-bags. Before we had forded the
Jordan, he had sung " The Wearing of the Green," and told me
the day and the hour at which the Republic was to be pro-
claimed at his native village in Galway. Like a true Irishman
of the South or West, he was happy only when he could be
generous > and so much joy did he show when I discovered
that the cork had slipped from my flask, and left me dependent
on him for my escape from the alkaline poison, that I half
believed he had drawn it himself when we stopped to change
horses for mules. Certain it is that he pressed his whisky so
fast upon me and the various drivers, that the day we most
needed its aid there was none, and the bottle itself had ended
its career by serving as a target for a trial of breech-loading
pistols.

At the sixth ranch from the city, which stands on the shores
of the lake, and close to the foot of the mountains, we found
Porter Rockwell, accredited chief of the Danites, the "Avenging
Angels " of Utah, and leader, it is said, of the " White Indians "
at the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

Since 1840, there has been no name of greater tenor in the
West than Rockwell's ; but in 1860 his death was reported in
England, and the career of the great Brother of Gideon was ended,

126 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xvin.

as we thought. I was told in Salt Lake City that he was still
alive and well, and his portrait was among those that I got
from Mr. Ottinger ; but I am not convinced that the man I saw,
and whose picture I possess, was in fact the Porter Rockwell
who murdered Stephenson in 1842. It may be convenient to
have two or three men to pass by the one name ; and I suspect
that this is so in the Rockwell case.

Under the name of Porter Rockwell some man (or men) has
been the terror of Mississippi Valley, of Plains, and Plateau, for
thirty years. In 1842, Joe Smith prophesied the death of
Governor Boggs, of Missouri, within six months : within thai
time he was shot — rumour said, by Rockwell. When the Danite
was publicly charged with having done the deed for fifty dollars
and a wagon team, he swore he'd shoot any man who said he
shot Boggs for gain ; "but if I am charged for shooting him,
they'll have to prove it " — words that looked like guilt. In 1842.
Stephenson died by the same hand, it is believed. Rockwell
was known to be the working chief of the band organised in
1838 to defend the First Presidency by any means whatever,
fair or foul, known at various times as the "Big Fan" that
should winnow the chaff from the wheat ; the " Daughter of
Zion," the " Destructives," the " Flying Angels," the " Brother
of Gideon," the "Destroying Angels." " Arise and thresh, C
daughter of Zion, for I will make thy horn iron, and will make
thy hoofs brass ; and thou shalt beat in pieces many people ;
and I will consecrate their gain unto the Lord, and their sub-
stance unto the lords of the whole earth " — this was the motto
of the band.

Little was heard of the Danites from the time that the Mor-
mons were driven from Illinois and Missouri until 1852, when
murder after murder, massacre after massacre, occurred in the
Grand Plateau. Bands of immigrants, of settlers on their road
to California, parties of United States' officers, and escaping
Mormons, were attacked by " Indians," and found scalped by
the next whites who came upon their trail. It was rumoured
in the Eastern States that the red men were Mormons in dis-
guise, following the tactics of the Anti-Renters of New York.
In the case of Almon Babbitt, the " Indians " were proved to
have been white.

PORTER ROCKWELL.

OH*P. xviii.] NAMELESS ALPS. 129

The atrocities culminated in the Mountain Meadows Mas-
sacre in 1857, when hundreds of men, women, and children
were murdered by men armed and clothed as Indians, but
sworn to by some who escaped as being whites. Porter Rock-
well has had the infamy of this tremendous slaughter piled on
to the huge mass of his earlier deeds of blood — whether rightly
or wrongly, who shall say ? The man that I saw was the man
that Captain Burton saw in 1860. His death was solemnly
recorded in the autumn of that year, yet of the identity of the
person I saw with the person described by Captain Burton
there can be no question. The bald, frowning forehead, the
sinister smile, the long grizzly curls falling upon the back, the
red cheek, the coal beard, the grey eye, are not to be mistaken.
Rockwell or not, he is a man capable of any deed. I had his
photograph in my pocket, and wanted to get him to sign it ;
but when, in awe of his glittering bowie and of his fame, I
asked, by way of caution, the ranchman — a new-come Paddy
— whether Rockwell could write, the fellow told me with many
an oath that " the boss " was as innocent of letters as a babe.
" As for writin'," he said, " cuss me if he's on it You bet he's
not — you bet."

Not far beyond Rockwell's, we drove close to the bench-
land ; and I was able to stop for a moment and examine the
rocks. From the verandah of the Mormon poet Naisbitt's
house in Salt Lake City, I had remarked a double line of
terrace running on one even level round the whole of the great
valley to the south, cut by nature along the base alike of the
Oquirrh and the Wasatch.

I had thought it possible that the terrace was the result of
the varying hardness of the strata; but, near Black Rock, on
the overland track, I discovered that where the terrace lines
have crossed the mountain precipices, they are continued
merely by deep stains upon the rocks. The inference is that
within extremely recent, if not historic times, the water has
stood at these levels from two to three hundred feet above the
present Great Salt Lake City, itself 4500 feet above the sea.
Three days' journey farther west, on the Reese's River Range,
I detected similar stains. Was the whole basin of the Rocky
Mountains — here more than a thousand miles across— once

i|o GREATER BRITAIN. |CHAP. xvm.

filled with a huge sea, of which the two Sierras were the shores,
and the Wasatch, Goshoot, Waroja, Toiyabe, Humboldt,
Washoe, and a hundred other ranges, the rocks and isles ?
The Great Salt Lake is but the largest of many such. I saw
one on Mirage Plains that is salter than its greater fellow.
Carson Sink is evidently the bed of a smaller bitter lake ; and
there are salt pools in dozens scattered through Ruby and
Smoky valleys. The Great Salt Lake itself is sinking year by
year, and the sage-brush is gaining upon the alkali desert
throughout the Grand Plateau. All these signs point to the
rapid drying-up of a great sea, owing to an alteration of cli-
matic conditions.*

In the Odd Fellows' Library at San Francisco I found a
map of North America, signed "John Harris, A.M.," and dated
" 1605," which shows a great lake in the country now com-
prised in the territories of Utah and Dacotah, with a width of
fifteen degrees, and named " Thongo " or " Thoya." It is not
likely that this inland sea is a mere exaggeration of the present
Great Salt Lake, because the views of that sheet of water are
everywhere limited by islands in such a way as to give to the eye
the effect of exceeding narrowness. The JesuitFathers,and other
Spanish travellers from California, may have looked from the
Utah mountains on the dwindling remnant of a great inland sea.

On we jogged and jolted, till we lost sight of the American
dead sea and of its lovely valley, and got into a canyon floored
Avith huge boulders and slabs of roughened rock, where I ex-
pected each minute to undergo the fate of that Indian traveller
who received such a jolt that he bit off the tip of his own
tongue • or of Horace Greeley, whose head was bumped, it is
said, through the roof of his conveyance. Here, as upon the
eastern side, the Wasatch, the track was marked by never-
ending lines of skeletons of mules and oxen.

On the first evening from Salt Lake, we escaped once more
from man at Stockton, a Gentile mining settlement in Rush
Valley, too small to be called a village, though possessed of a
municipality, and claiming the title of " city." By night we
crossed by Reynolds' Pass the Pah-o-tom or Cedar Range, in a
two horse "jerky," to which we had been shifted for speed and

* The Great Salt Lake has now begun again to rise.

CHAP. XVIIL] NAMELESS ALPS. 131

safety. Upon the heights the frost was bitter ; and when we
stopped at 3 A.M. for " supper," in which breakfast was com-
bined, we crawled into the stable like flies in autumn, half
killed by the sudden chill. My miner spoke but once all night.
" It's right cold," he said ; but fifty times at least he sang " The
Wearing of the Green." It was his only tune.

Soon after light we passed the spot where Captain Gunnison,
of the Federal Engineers, who had been in 1853 the first ex-
plorer of the Smoky Hill route, was killed " by the Ute In-
dians." Gunnison was an old enemy of the Mormons, and the
spot is ominously near to Rockwell's home. Here we came
out once more into the alkali, and our troubles from dust
began. For hours we were in a desert white as snow ; but for
reward we gained a glorious view of the Goshoot Range, which
we crossed by night, climbing silently on foot for hours in the
moonlight. The walking saved us from the cold.

The third day — a Sunday morning — we were at the foot of the
Waroja Mountains, with Egan Canyon for our pass, hewn by
nature through the living rock. You dare swear you see the
chisel-marks upon the stone. A gold-mill had years ago been
erected here, and failed. The heavy machinery was lost upon
the road ; but the four stone walls contained between them the
wreck of the lighter " plant."

As we jolted and journeyed on across the succeeding plain,
we spied in the far distance a group of black dots upon the
alkali. Man seems very small in the infinite expanse of the
Grand Plateau — the roof, as it were, of the world. At the end
of an hour we were upon them — a company of " overlanders "
" tracking " across the continent with mules. First came two
mounted men, well-armed with Deringers in the belt, and
Ballard breech-loaders on the thigh, prepared for ambush —
ready for action against elk or red-skin. About fifty yards
behind these scowling fellows came the main band of bearded,
red-shirted diggers, in huge boots and felt hats, each man riding
one mule, and driving another laden with packs and buckets.
As we came up, the main body halted, and an interchange of
compliments began. " Say, mister, thet's a slim horse of yourn."
" Guess not — guess he's all sorts of a horse, he air. And how
far might it be to the State of Varmount ?" " Wall, guess the

K 2

ij2 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP, xvin,

boys down to hum will be kinder joyed to sec us, howsomever
that may be." Just at this moment a rattlesnake was spied,
and every revolver discharged with a shout, all hailing the suc-
cessful shot with a " Bully for you ; thet hit him whar he lives."
And on, without more ado, they went.

Even the roughest of these overlanders has in him some-
thing more than roughness. As far as appearance goes, every
woman of the Far West is a duchess, each man a Coriolanus.
The royal gait, the imperial glance and frown, belong to every
ranchman in Nevada. Every fellow that you meet upon the
track near Stockton or Austin City, walks as though he were
defying lightning, yet this without silly strut or braggadocio.
Nothing can be more complete than the ranchman's self-com-
mand, save in the one point of oaths ; the strongest, freshest,
however, of their moral features is a grand enthusiasm, amount-
ing sometimes to insanity. As for their oaths, they tell you it
is nothing unless the air is " blue with cusses." At one of the
ranches where there was a woman, she said quietly to me, in
the middle of an awful burst of swearing, " Guess Bill swears
steep ;" to which I replied, " Guess so " — the only allusion I
ever heard or hazarded to Western swearing.

Leaving to our north a snowy range — nameless here, but
marked on European maps as the East Humboldt — we
reached the foot of the Ruby Valley Mountains on the Sunday
afternoon in glowing sunshine, and crossed them in a snow-
storm. In the night we journeyed up and down the Diamond
or Quartz Range, and morning found us at the foot of the Pond
Chain. At the ranch — where, in the absence of elk, we ate
" bacon," and dreamt we breakfasted — I chatted with an agent
of the Mail Company on the position of the ranchmen, divisible,
as he told me, into " cooks and hostlers." The cooks, my ex-
perience had taught me, were the aptest scholars, the greatest
politicians ; the hostlers, men of war and completest masters of
the art of Western swearing. The cooks had a New-England
cut ; the hostlers, like Southerners, wore their hair all down
their backs. I begged an explanation of the reason tor the
marked distinction. " They are picked," he said, " from
different classes. When a boy comes to me and asks for some-
thing to do, I give him a look, and see what kind of stuff he's

flltAt>. iviii.] XAM£L£S5 ALPS. ijj

made of. If he's a gay duck out for a six-weeks' spree, I send
him down here, or to Bitter Wells ; but if he's a clerk or a
poet, or any such sorter fool as that, why then I set him cook-
ing ; and plaguy good cooks they make, as you must find."

The drivers on this portion of the route are as odd fellows
as are the ranchmen. Wearing huge jack-boots, flannel shirts
tucked into their trousers, but no coat or vest, and hats with
enormous brims, they have their hair long, and their beards un-
trimmed. Their oaths, I need hardly say, are fearful. At
night they wrap themselves in an enormous cloak, drink as
much whisky as their passengers can spare them, crack their
whips and yell strange yells. They are quarrelsome and over-
bearing, honest probably, but eccentric in their ways of show-
ing it. They belong chiefly to the mixed Irish and German
race, and have all been in Australia during the gold rush, and
in California before deep sinking replaced the surface diggings.
They will tell you how they often washed out and gambled
away a thousand ounces in a month, living like Roman empe-
rors, then started in digging-life again upon the charity of their
wealthier friends. They hate men dressed in " biled shirts " or
in " store clothes," and show their aversion in strange ways. I
had no objection myself to build fires and fetch wood ; but I
drew the line at going into the sage-brush to catch the mules,
that not being a business which I felt competent to undertake.
The season was advanced, the snows had not yet reached the
valleys, which were parched by the drought of all the summer,
feed for the mules was scarce, and they wandered a long way.
Time after time we would drive into a station, the driver say-
ing, with strange oaths, " Guess them mules is clared out from
this here ranch ; guess they is into this sage-brush ; " and it
would be an hour before the mules would be discovered feed-
ing in some forgotten valley. Meanwhile the miner and myself
would have revolver practice at the skeletons and telegraph-
posts when sage fowl failed us, and rattlesnakes grew scarce.

After all, it is easy to speak of the eccentricities of dress and
manner displayed by Western men, but Eastern men and
Europeans upon the Plateau are not the prim creatures of
Fifth Avenue or Pall Mall. From San Francisco I sent home
an excellent photograph of myself in the clothes in which I

134 GREATER BRITAIN. \CK\P.

had crossed the Plateau, those being the only ones I had to
wear till my baggage came round from Panama. The result
was, that my oldest friends failed to recognise the portrait. At
the foot I had written, " A Border Ruffian : " they believed not
the likeness, but the legend.

The difficulties of dress upon these mountain ranges are
great indeed. To sit one night exposed to keen frost and
biting wind, and the next day to toil for hours up a mountain-
side, beneath a blazing sun, are very opposite conditions. I
found my dress no bad one. At night I wore a Canadian fox-
fur cap, Mormon 'coon-skin gloves, two coats, and the whole of
my light silk shirts. By day I took off the coats, the gloves,
and cap, and walked in my shirts, adding but a Panama hat to
my " fit-out."

As we began the ascent of the Pond River Range, we caught
up a bullock-train, which there was not room to pass. The
miner and myself turned out from the jerky, and for hours
climbed alongside the wagons. I was struck by the freemasonry
of this mountain travel : Bryant, the miner, had come to the
end of his " Solace," as the most famed chewing-tobacco in
these parts is called. Going up to the nearest teamster, he
asked for some, and was at once presented with a huge cake —
fit for the consumption of a Channel pilot.

The climb was long enough to give me a deep insight into
the inner mysteries of bullock-driving. Each of the great two-
storied Californian wagons was drawn by twelve stout oxen ;
still, the pace was not a mile an hour, accomplished, as it
seemed to me, not so much by the aid as in spite of tremen-
dous flogging. Each teamster carried a short-handled whip
with a twelve-foot leathern lash, which was wielded with two
hands, and, after many a whirl, brought down along the whole
length of the back of each bullock of the team in turn, the
stroke being accompanied by a shout of the bullock's name,
and followed, as it was preceded, by a string of the most ex-
plosive oaths. The favourite names for bullocks were those of
noted public characters and of Mormon elders, and cries were
frequent of " Ho, Brigham ! " " Ho, Joseph ! " " Ho, Grdnt ! "—
the blow falling with the accented syllable. The London
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would find at

OTAP. XVMXJ NAMELESS ALPS. 135

Pond River ranch an excellent opening for a mission. The
appointed officer should be supplied with two Deringers and a
well-filled whisky-barrel.

Through a gap in the mountain crest we sighted the West
Humboldt Range, across an open country dotted here and
there with stunted cedar, and, crossing Smoky Valley, we
plunged into a deep pass in the Toi Abbe Range, and reached
Austin — a mining town of importance, rising two years old — in
the afternoon of the fourth day from Salt Lake City.

After dining at an Italian digger's restaurant with an amount
of luxury that recalled our feasts at Salt Lake City, I started
on a stroll, in which I was stopped at once by a shout from an
open bar-room of "Say I mister!" Pulling up sharply, I was
surrounded by an eager crowd, asking from all sides the one
question: "Might you be Professor Muller?" Although,
flattered to find that I looked less disreputable and ruffianly
than I felt, I nevertheless explained as best I could that I was
no professor — only to be assured that if I was any professor at
all, Muller or other, I should do just as well : a mule was ready
for me to ride to the mine, and " Jess kinder fix us up about
this new lode." If my new-found friends had not carried an
overwhelming force of pistols, I might have gone to the mine
as Professor Muller, and given my opinion for what it was worth ;
as it was, I escaped only by " liquoring up " over the error.
Cases of mistaken identity are not always so pleasant in Austin.
They told me that, a few weeks before, a man riding down the
street heard a shot, saw his hat fall into the mud, and, picking
it up, found a small round hole on each side. Looking up, he
saw a tall mintr, revolver smoking in hand, who smiled grimly,
and said: "Guess thet's my muel." The rider having politely
explained when and where the mule was bought, the miner pro-
fessed himself satisfied with a " Guess I was wrong — let's liquor."

In the course of my walk through Austin, I came upon a
row of neat huts, each with a board on which was painted,
"Sam Sing, washing and ironing," or " Mangling by Ah Low."
A few paces farther on was a shop painted red, but adorned
with cabalistic scrawls in black ink ; and farther still was a tiny
joss-house. Yellow men in spotless clothes of dark-green and
blue, were busy at buying and selling, at cooking, at washing.

I}6 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xvin.

Some, at a short trot, were carrying burthens at the ends of
a long bamboo pole. All were quiet, quick, orderly, and clean.
I had at last come thoroughly among the Chinese people, not
to lose sight of them again till I left Geelong, or even Suez.

Returning to the room where I had dined, I parted with Pat
Bryant, quitting him, in Western fashion, after a good " trade "
or " swop." He had taken a fancy to the bigger of my two
revolvers. He was going to breed cattle in Oregon, he told
me, and thought it might be useful for shooting his wildest
beasts by riding in the Indian manner, side by side with them,
and shooting at the heart. I answered by guessing that I " was
on the sell ;" and traded the weapon against one of his that
matched my smaller tool. When I reached Virginia City, I in-
quired prices, and was almost disappointed to find that I had
not been cheated in the " trade."

A few minutes after leaving the " hotel " at Austin, and call-
ing at the post-office for the mails, I again found myself in the
desert — indeed, Austin itself can hardly be styled oasis : it may
have gold, but it has no green thing within its limits. It is in
canyons and on plains like these, with the skeletons of oxen
every few yards along the track, that one comes to comprehend
the full significance of the terrible entry in the army route-
books — " No grass ; no water."

Descending a succession of tremendous "grades," as in-
clines upon roads and railroads are called out West, we came
on to the lava-covered plain of Reese's River Valley, a wall
of snowy mountain rising grandly in our front. Close to the
stream were a ranch or two, and a double camp, of miners and
of a company of Federal troops. The diggers were playing
with their glistening knives as diggers only can ; the soldiers —
their huge sombreros worn loosely on one side — were lounging
idly in the sun.

Within an hour, we were again in snow and ice upon the
summit of another nameless range.

This evening, after five sleepless nights, I felt most terribly
the peculiar form of fatigue that we had experienced after six
days and nights upon the Plains. Again the brain seemed
divided into two parts, thinking independently, and one side
putting questions while the other answered them; but this

on At. xvm.] NAMELESS ALPS. 137

time there was also a sort of half insanity, a not altogether
disagreeable wandering of the mind, a replacing of the actual
by an imagined ideal scene.

On and on we journeyed, avoiding the Shoshone' and West
Humboldt mountains, but picking our way along the most
fearful ledges that it has been my fate to cross, and traversing
from end to end the dreadful Mirage Plains. At nightfall we
sighted Mount Davidson and the Washoe Range, and at 3 A.M.
I was in bed once more — in Virginia City.

i3» GREATER BRITAIN. (CHAP. xnt.

CHAPTER XIX.
VIRGINIA CITY.

" GUESS the Governor's considerable skeert"

" You bet he's mad."

My sitting down to breakfast at the same small table seemed
to end the talk ; but I had not been out West for nothing, so
explaining that I was only four hours in Virginia City, I
inquired what had occurred to fill the Governor of Nevada
with vexation and alarm.

" D'you tell now ! only four hours in this great young city.
Wall, guess it's a bully business. You see, some time back the
Governor pardoned a road agent after the citizens had voted
him a rope. Yes, sir ! But that ain't all : yesterday, cuss me
if he didn't refuse ter pardon one of the boys who had jess
shot another in play like. Guess he thinks hisself some pump-
kins." I duly expressed my horror, and my informant went
on : " Wall, guess the citizens paid him off purty slick. They
jess sent him a short thick bit of rope with a label, ' For his
Excellency.' You bet ef he ain't mad — you bet ! Pass us
•those molasses, mister."

I. was not disappointed. To see Virginia City and Carson,
since I first heard their fame in New York, had been with me
a passion, but the deed thus told me in the dining-room of the
" Empire " Hotel was worthy a place in the annals of
" Washoe." Under its former name, the chief town of Nevada
was ranked not only the highest, but the " cussedest " town in
the States, its citizens expecting a " dead man for breakfast "
every day, and its streets ranging from seven to eight thousand
feet above the sea. Its twofold fame is leaving it : the Colo-
radan villages of North Empire and Black Hawk are nine or

CHAP, xix.] VIRGINIA CITY. 139

ten thousand feet above sea level, and Austin, and Virginia
City in Montana beat it in playful pistolling and vice. Never-
theless, in the point of " pure cussedness " old Washoe still
stands well, as my first introduction to its ways will show. All
the talk of Nevada reformation applies only to the surface
signs : when a miner tells you that Washoe is turning pious,
and that he intends shortly to " vamose," he means that, unlike
Austin, which is still in its first stage of mule-stealing and
monte', Virginia City has passed through the second period —
that of " vigilance committees " and " historic trees " — and is
entering the third, the stage of churches and " city officers,"
or police.

The population is still a shifting one. A by-law of the
municipality tells us that the " permanent population " consists
of those who reside more than a month within the city. At
this moment the miners are pouring into Washoe from north
and south and east, from Montana, from Arizona, and from
Utah, coming to the gaieties of the largest mining city to spend
their money during the fierce short winter. When I saw Vir-
ginia City, it was worse than Austin.

Every other house is a restaurant, a drinking shop, a gaming
hell, or worse. With no one to make beds, to mend clothes,
to cook food — with no house, no home — men are almost
certain to drink and gamble. The Washoe bar-rooms are the
most brilliant in the States : As we drove in from Austin at
3 A.M., there was blaze enough for us to see from the frozen
street the portraits of Lola Montez, Ada Menken, Heenan,
and the other Californian celebrities with which the bar-rooms
were adorned.

Although " petticoats," even Chinese, are scarce, dancing
was going on in every house ; but there is a rule in miners'
balls that prevents all difficulties arising from an over supply of
men : every one who has a patch on the rear portion of his
breeches does duty for a lady in the dance, and as gentlemen
are forced by the custom of the place to treat their partners at
ihe bar, patches are popular.

Up to eleven in the morning hardly a man was to be seen :
a community that sits up all night, begins its work in the after-
noon. For hours I had the blazing hills, called streets, to

140 GREATER BRITATS. [CHAP. itx.

myself for meditating ground ; but it did not need hours to
bring me to think that a Vermonter's description of the climate
of the mountains was not a bad one when he said : " You rise
at eight, and shiver in yoar cloak till nine, when you lay it
aside, and walk freely in your woollens. At twelve you come
in for your gauze coat an 1 your Panama ; at two you are ir
a hammock cursing the heat, but at four you venture out
again, and by five are in your woollens. At six you begin to
shake with cold, and shiver on till bedtime, which you make
darned early." Even at this great height, the thermometer in
the afternoon touches 80° Fahr. in the shade, while from sunset
to sunrise there is a bitter frost. So it is throughout the
Plateau. When morning after morning we reached a ranch,
and rushed out of the freezing ambulance through the still
colder route air to the fragrant cedar fire, there to roll with
pain at the thawing of our joints, it was hard to bear it in mind
that by eight o'clock we should be shutting out the sun, and by
noon melting even in the deepest shade.

As I sat at dinner in a miners' restaurant, my opposite neigh-
bour, finding that I was not long from England, informed me
he was " the independent editor of the Nevada Union Gazette?
and went on to ask : " And how might you have left literatooral
pursoots ? How air Tennyson and Thomas T. Carlyle ?" I
assured him that to the best of my belief they were fairly well,
to which his reply was : "Guess them ther men ken sling ink,
they ken." When we parted, he gave me a copy of his paper,
in which I found that he called a rival editor " a walking
whisky-bottle " and " a Fenian imp." The latter phrase
reminded me that, of the two or three dozen American editors
that I had met, this New Englander was the first who was
" native born." Stenhouse, in Salt Lake City, is an English-
man, so is Stanton of Denver, and the whole of the remainder
of the band were Irishmen. As for the earlier assertion in the
" editorial," it was not a wild one, seeing that Virginia City
has five hundred whisky-shops for a population of ten thou-
sand. Artemus Ward said of Virginia City, in a farewell speech
to the inhabitants that should have been published in his
works : " I never, gentlemen, was in a city where I was treated
so well, nor, I T,vill add, so often." Through every open door

CHAP. xn.J VIRGINIA CITT. 141

the diggers can be seen tossing the whisky down their throats
with a scowl of resolve, as though they were committing
suicide — which, indeed, except in the point of speed, is pro-
babty the case.

The Union Gazette was not the only paper that I had given
me to read that morning. Not a bridge over a " crick," not
even a blacked pair of boots, made me so thoroughly aware
that I had in a measure returned to civilization as did the gift
of a California Alta containing a report of a debate in the
British Parliament upon the Bank Charter Act. The speeches
were appropriate to my feelings : I had just returned not only
to civilization, but to the European inconveniences of gold and
silver money. In Utah, gold and greenbacks circulate indiffe-
rently, with a double set of prices always marked and asked ;
in Nevada and California, greenbacks are as invisible as gold
in New York or Kansas. Nothing can persuade the Califor-
nians that the adoption by the Eastern States of an inconvertible
paper system is anything but the result of a conspiracy against
the Pacific States — one in wnich they at least are determined
to have no share. Strongly Unionist in feeling as were Cali-
fornia, Oregon, and Nevada during the rebellion, to have forced
greenbacks upon them would have been almost more than their
loyalty would have borne. In the severest taxation they were
prepared to acquiesce; but paper-money they believe to be
downright robbery, and the invention of the devil.

To me the reaching gold once more was far from pleasant,
for the advantages of paper-money to the traveller are enormous :
it is light, it wears no holes in your pockets, it reveals its pre-
sence by no untimely clinking ; when you jump from a coach,
every thief within a mile is not at once aware that you have ten
dollars in your right-hand pocket. The Nevadans say that
forgeries are so common, that their neighbours in Colorado
have been forced to agree that any decent imitation shall be
taken as good, it being too difficult to examine into each case.
For my part, though in rapid travel a good deal of paper passed
through my hands in change, my only loss by forgery was one
half-dollar note ; my loss by wear and tear, the same.

In spite of the gold currency, prices are higher in Nevada
than in Denver. A shave is half a dollar — gold in Washoe,

»4J GREATER BRITAIN. [cm p. xrx.

and in Atchison, but a paper quarter. A boot-blacking is fifty
cents in gold, instead of ten cents paper, as in Chicago or St.
Louis.

During the war, when fluctuations in the value of the paper
were great and sudden, prices changed from day to day. Hotel
proprietors in the West received their guests at breakfast, it is

said, with " Glorious news ; we've whipped at . Gold's 1 80 ;

board's down half-a-dollar." While 1 was in the country, gold
fluctuated between 140 and 163, but prices remained unaltered.

Paper money is of some use to a young country in making
the rate of wages appear enormous, and so attracting immigra-
tion. If a Cork bog-trotter is told that he can get two dollars
a day for his work in America, but only one in Canada, no
economic considerations interfere to prevent him rushing to the
nominally higher rate. Whether the working men of America
have been gainers by the inflation of the currency, or the re-
verse, it is hard to say. It has been stated in the Senate that
wages have risen sixty per cent., and prices ninety per cent. ;
but " prices " is a term of great width. The men themselves
believe that they have not been losers, and no argument can be
so strong as that.

My first afternoon upon Mount Davidson I spent under-
ground in the Gould and Curry mine, the wealthiest and largest
of those that have tapped the famous Comstock lode. In this
single vein of silver lies the prosperity not only of the city, but
of Nevada State ; its discovery will have hastened the comple-
tion of the overland railway itself by several years. It is owing
to the enormous yield of this one lode that the United States
now stands second only to Mexico as a silver-producing land.
In one year Nevada has given the world as much silver as there
came from the mines of all Peru.

The rise of Nevada has been sudden. I was shown in Vir-
ginia City a building block of land that rents for ten times what
it cost four years ago. Nothing short of solid silver by the yard
would have brought twenty thousand men to live upon the
summit of Mount Davidson. It is easy here to understand the
mad rush and madder speculation that took place at the time
of the discovery. Every valley in the Washoe Range was
" prospected," and pronounced paved with silver ; every moun-

CHAP, xrs.] • VIRGINIA CITY. 14?

tain was a solid mass. " Cities " were laid out, ani town lots
sold, wherever room was afforded by a flat piece of ground.
The publication of the Californian newspapers was suspended,
as writers, editors, proprietors, and devils, all had gone with the
rush. San Francisco went clean mad, and London and Paris
were not far behind. Of the hundred " cities " founded, but
one was built ; of the thousand claims registered, but a hundred
were taken up and worked ; of the companies formed, but half-a-
dozen ever paid a dividend, except that obtained from the sale
of their plant. The silver of which the whole base of Mount
Davidson is composed has not been traced in the surrounding
hills, though they are covered with a forest of posts, marking
the limits of forgotten " claims : "

"James Thompson, 130 feet N.E. by N."

" Ezra Williams, 130 feet due E. ; "

and so for miles. The Gould and Curry Company, on the
other hand, is said to have once paid a larger half-yearly divi-
dend than the sum of the original capital, and its shares have
been quoted at 1000 per cent. Such are the differences of a
hundred yards.

One of the oddities of mining life is, that the gold-diggers
profess a sublime contempt for silver-miners and their trade.
A Coloradan going West was asked in Nevada if in his country
they could beat the Comstock lode. "Dear, no!" he said.
" The boys with us are plaguy discouraged jess at present."
The Nevadans were down upon the word. " Discouraged, air
they ? " " Why, yes ! They've jess found they've got ter dig
through three feet of solid silver 'fore ever they come ter gold."

Some of the Nevada companies have curious titles. " The
Union Lumber Association " is not bad ; but " The Segregated
Belcher Mining Enterprise of Gold Hill District, Storey County,
Nevada State," is far before it as an advertising name.

In a real "coach" at last — a coach with windows and a roof —
drawn by six " mustangs," we dashed down Mount Davidson
upon a real road, engineered with grades and bridges — the first
since Junction .City. Through the Devil's Gate we burst out
upon a chaotic country. For a hundred miles the eye ranged
over humps and bumps of every size, from stones to mountains,
but no level ground, no field, no house, no tree, no greon. Nol

144 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xrs.

even the Sahara so thoroughly deserves the name of "desert."
In Egypt there is the oasis, in Arabia here and there a date and
a sweet-water well ; here there is nothing, not even earth. The
ground is soda, and the water and air are full of salt.

This road is notorious for the depredations of the "road
agents," as white highwaymen are politely called, red or yellow
robbers being still " darned thieves." At Desert Wells, the
coach had been robbed, a week before I passed, by men who
had first tied up the ranchmen, and taken their places to receive
the driver and passengers when they arrived. The prime object
with the robbers is the treasury box of " dust," but they generally
" go through " the passengers, by way of pastime, after their
more regular work is done. As to firing, they have a rule — a
simple one. If a passenger shoots, every man is killed. It
need not be said that the armed driver and armed guard never
shoot ; they know their business far too well.

Hard by Desert Station we came on hot and cold springs in
close conjunction, flowing almost from the same " sink-hole " —
the original twofold springs, I .hinted to our driver, that Poseidon
planted in the Atlantic isle. He said that " some one of that
name" had a ranch near Carson, so I "concluded" to drop
Poseidon, lest I should say something that might offend.

From Desert Wells the alkali grew worse and worse, but
began to be alleviated at the ranches by irrigation of the throat
with delicious Californian wine. The plain was strewn with
erratic boulders, and here and there I noticed sharp sand-cones,
like those of the Elk Mountain country in Utah.

At last we dashed into the " city " named after the notorious
Kit Carson, of which an old inhabitant has lately said, " This
here city is growing plaguy mean : there was only one man
shot all yesterday." There was what is here styled an " alter-
cation " a day or two ago. The sheriff tried to arrest a man in
broad daylight in the single street which Carson boasts. The
result was that each fired several shots at the other, and that
both were badly hurt.

The half-deserted mining village and wholly ruined Mormon
settlement stand grimly on the bare rock, surrounded by weird-
looking depressions of the earth, the far-famed " sinks," the very
bottom of the Plateau, and goal of all the Plateau streams — in

. xix J VIRGASTA CITY 145

summer dry, and spread with sheets of salt ; in winter filled with
brine. The Sierra Nevada rises like a wall from the salt pools,
with a fringe of giant leafless trees hanging stiffly from its
heights — my first forest since I left the Missouri bottoms. The
trees made me feel that I was really across the Continent, within
reach at least of the fogs of the Pacific — on " the other side ; "
that there was still rough cold work to be done was clear from
the great snow-fields that showed through the pines with that
threatening blackness that the purest of snows wear in the
evening when they face the east.

As I gazed upon the tremendous battlements of the Sierra, I
not only ceased to marvel that for three hundred years traffic
had gone round by Panama rather than through these frightful
obstacles, but even wondered that they should be surmounted
now. In this hideous valley it was that the Califon-an immi-
grants wintered in 1848, and killed their Indian guides for food.
For three months more the strongest of them lived upon the
bodies of those who died, incapable in their weakness of making
good their foothold upon the slippery snows of the Sierra.
After a while, some were cannibals by choice ; but the story is
not one that can be told.

Galloping up the gentle grades of Johnson's Pass, we began
the ascent of the last of fifteen great mountain ranges crossed or
flanked since I had left Great Salt Lake City. The thought
recalled a passage of arms that had occurred at Denver between
Dixon and Governor Gilpin. In his grand enthusiastic way,
the Governor, pointing to the Cordillera, said, " Five hundred
snowy ranges lie between this and San Francisco." " Peaks,"
said Dixon. " Ranges !" thundered Gilpin ; " I've seen them."

Of the fifteen greater ranges to the westward of Salt Lake,
eight at least are named from the rivers they contain, or are
wholly nameless. Trade has preceded survey ; the country is
not yet thoroughly explored. The six paper maps by which I
travelled — the best and latest — differed in essential points. The
position and length of the Great Salt Lake itself are not yet
accurately known ; the height of Mount Hood has been made
anything between nine thousand and twenty thousand feet ;
the southern boundary line of Nevada State passes through
untrodden wilds A rectification of the limits of California and

146 GREATER BRITATN. (CHAP. MX.

Nevada was attempted no great time ago, and the head waters
of some stream which formed a starting-point had been found
to be erroneously laid down. At the flourishing young city of
Aurora, in Esmeralda county, a court of California was sitting.
A mounted messenger rode up at great pace, and, throwing his
bridle round the stump, dashed in breathlessly, shouting, —
" What's this here court ?" Being told that it was a Californian
court, he said, " Wall, thet's all wrong : this here's Nevada.
We've been an' rectified this boundary, an' California's a good
ten mile off here." " Wall, Mr. Judge, I move this court ad-
journ," said the plaintiffs counsel. " How can a court adjourn
thet's not a court?" replied the Judge. " Guess I'll. go." And
off he went. So, if the court of Aurora was a court, it must be
sitting now.

The coaching on this line is beyond comparison the best the
world can.show. Drawn by six half-bred mustangs, driven by
whips of the fame of the Hank Monk " who drove Greeley," the
mails and passengers have been conveyed from Virginia City to
the rail at Placerville, 154 miles, in 15 hours and 20 minutes,
including a stoppage of half-ar-hour for supper, and sixteen
shorter stays to change horses. In this distance, the Sierra
Nevada has to be traversed in a rapid rise of three thousand
feet, a fall of a thousand feet, another rise of the same, and
then a descent of five thousand feet on the California side.

Before the road was made, the passage was one of extraordi-
nary difficulty. A wagon once started, they say, from Folsom,
bearing " Carson or bust " in large letters upon the tilt. After
ten days, it returned lamely enough, with four of the twelve
oxen gone, and bearing the label " Busted."

When we were nearing Hank Monk's "piece," I became
impatient to see the hero of the famous ride. What was my
disgust when the driver of the earlier portion of the road
appeared again upon the box in charge of six magnificent iron-
greys ! The peremptory cry of " All aboard " brought me with-
out remonstrance to the coach, but I took care to get upon the
box, although, as we were starting before the break of day, the
frost was terrible. To my relief, when I inquired after Hank,
the driver said that he was at a ball at a timber ranch in the
forest " six mile on." At early light we reached the spot — the

CHAP. xnc.J VIRGINIA CfTT. 147

summit of the more eastern of the twin ranges of the Sierra.
Out came Hank, amidst the cheers of the half-dozen men and
women of the timber ranch who formed the " ball," wrapped up
to the eyes in furs, and took the reins without a word. For
miles he drove steadily and moodily along. I knew these
drivers too well to venture upon speaking first when they were
in the sulks ; at last, however, I lost all patience, and silently
offered him a cigar. He took it without thanking me, but
after a few minutes said : "Thet last driver, how did he drive?"
I made some shuffling answer, when he cut in : " Drove as ef
he were skeert ; and so he was. Look at them mustangs.
Yoo — ou ! " As he yelled, the horses started at what out here
they style " the run ; " and when, after ten minutes, he pulled
up, we must have done three miles, round most violent and
narrow turns, with only the bare precipice at the side, and a fall
of often a hundred feet to the stream at the bottom of the
ravine — the Simplon without its wall. Dropping into the
talking mood, he asked me the usual questions as to my busi-
ness, and whither I was bound. When I told him I thought of
visiting Australia, he said, " D'you tell now ! Jess give my love
— at Bendigo — to Gumption Dick." Not another word about
Australia or Gumption Dick could I draw from him. I asked
at Bendigo for Dick ; but not even the officer in command of
the police had ever heard of Hank Monk's friend.

The sun rose as we dashed through the grand landscapes of
Lake Tahoe. On we went, through gloomy snow-drifts anc
still sadder forests of gigantic pines nearly three hundred feet ir
height, and down the canyon of the American river from the
second range. Suddenly we left the snows, and burst through
the pine woods into an open scene. From gloom there was a
change to light ; from sombre green to glowing red and gold.
The trees, no longer hung with icicles, were draped with
Spanish moss. In ten yards we had come from winter into
summer. Alkali was left behind for ever; we were in El Dorado,
on the Pacific shores — in sunny, dreamy California.

L 2

14.8 UXEATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. XX.

CHAPTER XX.
EL DORADO.

THE city of the high priest clothed in robes of gold figures
largely in the story of Spanish discovery in America. The
hardy soldiers who crossed the Atlantic in caravels and cock-
boats, and toiled in leathern doublets and plate armour through
the jungle swamp of Panama, were lured on through years of
plague and famine by the dream of a country whose rivers
flowed with gold. Diego de Mendoza found the land in 1532,
but it was not till January, 1848, that James Marshall washed
the Golden Sands of El Dorado.

The Spaniards were not the first to place the earthly para-
dise in America. Not to speak of New Atlantis, the Canadian
Indians have never ceased to hand down to their sons a legend
of western abodes of bliss, to which their souls journey after
death, through frightful glens and forests. In their mystic
chants they describe minutely the obstacles over which the
souls must toil to reach the regions of perpetual spring. These
stories are no mere dreams, but records of the great Indian
migration from the West : the liquid-eyed Hurons, not sprung
from the Canadian snows, may be Californian if they are not
Malay, the Pacific shores their happy hunting-ground, the
climate of Los Angeles their never-ending spring.

The names "The Golden State" and "El Dorado" are doubly
applicable to California : her light and landscape, as well as her
soil, are golden. Here on the Pacific side, Nature wears a robe
of deep rich yellow : even the distant hills, no longer purple,
are wrapt in golden haze. No more cliffs and canyons — all is
rounded, soft, and warm. The Sierra, which faces eastwards,
with four thousand feet of wall-like rock, on the west descends

VIEW Oli THL AMERICAN K1VER— THE PLACE V/HHRE GOLD WAS FIRST FO17IID.

CHAP, xx.] £L DOli ADO. l$t

gent]/ in vine-clad slopes into the California!! vales, and trends
away in spurs towards the sea. The scenery of the Nevada
side was weird, but these western foot-hills are unlike anything
in the world. Drake, who never left the Pacific shores, named
the country New Albion, from the whiteness of a headland on
the coast ; but the first viceroys were less ridiculously misled
by patriotic vanity, when they christened it New Spain.

In the warm dry sunlight, we rolled down hills of rich red
loam, and through forests of noble redwood — the Sequoia sem-
pennrens, brother to the Sequoia, gigantea, or Wellingtonia of
our lawns. Dashing at full gallop through the American River,
just below its falls, where, in 1848, the Mormons first dug that
Californian gold which in the interests of their Church they had
better have let alone, we came upon great gangs of Indians
working by proxy upon the Continental railroad. The Indian's
plan for living happily is a simple one : he sits and smokes in
silence while his women work, and he thus lives upon the
earnings of the squaws. Unlike a Mormon patriarch, he con-
trives that polygamy shall pay, and says with the New Zealand
Maori : " A man with one wife may starve, but a man with
many wives grows fat" These fellows were Shoshone's from
the other side of the Plateau ; for the Pacific Indians, who are
black, not yellow, will not even force their wives to work, which,
in the opinion of the Western men, is the ultimate form of
degradation in a race. Higher up the hills, Chinamen alone
are employed ; but their labour is too costly to be thrown away
upon the easier work.

In El Dorado City we stayed not long enough for the ex-
ploration of the once famous surface gold mines, now forming
one long vineyard, but, rolling on, were soon among the tents
of Placerville, which had been swept with fire a few months
before. All these valley diggings have been deserted for deep-
sinking — not that they are exhausted yet, but that the yield
has ceased to be sufficient to tempt the gambling digger. The
men who lived in Placerville and made it infamous throughout
the world some years ago are scattered now through Nevada,
Arizona, Montana, and the Frazer country, and Chinamen and
Digger Indians have the old workings to themselves, settling
their rights as against each other by daily battle and perpetual

151 GREATER BRITAIN. [HUP. xx>

feud. The Digger Indians are the most degraded of all the
aborigines of North America— outcasts from the other tribes-
men under a ban — " tapu," as their Maori cousins say— weapon-
less, naked savages who live on roots, and pester the industrious
Chinese.

It is not with all their foes that the, .yellow men can cope so
easily. In a tiny Chinese theatre in their camp near Placer-
ville, I saw a farce which to the remainder of the audience was
no doubt a very solemn drama, in which the adventures of two
Celestials on the diggings were given to the world. The only
scene in which the pantomime was sufficiently clear for me to
read it without the possibility of error was one in which a white
man — " Melican man " — came to ask for taxes. The China-
men had paid their taxes once before, but the fellow said that
didn't matter. The yellow men consulted together, and at last
agreed that the stranger was a humbug, so the play ended with
a big fight, in which they drove him off their ground A
Chinaman played the over-'cute Yankee, and did it well.

Perhaps the tax-collectors in the remoter districts of the
States count on the Chinese to make up the deficiencies in
their accounts caused by the non-payment of their taxes by the
whites ; for even in these days of comparative quiet and civi-
lization, taxes are not gathered to their full amount in any of
the Territories, and the justice of the collector is in Montana
tempered by many a threat of instant lynching if he proceeds
with his assessment. Even in Utah, the returns are far from
satisfactory : the three great merchants of Salt Lake City
should, if their incomes are correctly stated, contribute a
heavier sum than that returned for the whole of the population
of the territory.

The white diggers who preceded the Chinese have left then
traces in the names of lodes and placers. There is no town
in California with such a title as the Coloradan city of Buck-
skin Joe, but Yankee Jim comes near it. Placerville itself was
formerly known as Hangtown, on account of its being the city
in which "lynch-law was inaugurated." Dead Shot Flat is not
far from here, and within easy distance are Hell's Delight,
Jackass Gulch, and Loafer's Hill. The once famous Plug-
ugly Gulch has now another name ; but of ChuckleheaJ

CHAP. xx. J EL DORADO. 15 3

Diggings and Puppytown I could not find the whereabouts in
my walks and rides. Graveyard Canyon, Gospel Gulch, and
Paint-pot Hill are other Californian names. It is to be hoped
that the English and Spanish names will live unmutilated in
California and Nevada, to hand down in liquid syllables the
history of a half-forgotten conquest, an already perished race.
San Francisco has become "Frisco" in speech if not on paper,
and Sacramento will hardly bear the wear and tear of Cali-
fornian life; but the use of the Spanish tongue has spread
among the Americans who have dealings with the Mexican
country folk of California State, and, except in mining districts,
the local names will stand.

It is not places only that have strange designations in
America. Out of the Puritan fashion of naming children from
the Old Testament patriarchs has grown, by a sort of recoil,
the custom of following the heroes of the classics, and when
they fail, inventing strange titles for children. Mahonri Cahoon
lives in Salt Lake City ; Attila Harding was secretary to one of
the governors of Utah ; Michigan University has for president
Erastus Haven ; for superintendent, Oramel Hosford ; for pro
fessors, Abram Sanger, Silas Douglas, Moses Gunn, Zina Pitcher,
Alonzo Pitman, De Volson Wood, Lucius Chapin, and Corydon
Ford. Luman Stevens, Bolivar Barnum, Wyllys Ransom, Ozora
Stearns, and Buel Derby were Michigan officers during the
war ; and Epaphroditus Ransom was formerly governor of the
State. Galusha Grow was speaker during a portion of Lincoln's
presidential term. Theron Rockwell, Gershon Weston, and
Bela Kellogg, are well-known politicians in Massachusetts, ana
Colonel Liberty Billings is equally prominent in Florida. In
New England school-lists it is hard to pick boys from girls.
Who shall tell the sex of Lois Lombard, Asahel Morton,
Ginery French, Royal Miller, Thankful Poyne ? A Chicago
man, who was lynched in Central Illinois while I was in the
neighbourhood, was named Alonza Tibbets. Eliphalet Arnould
and Velenus Sherman are ranchmen on the overland road ;
Sereno Burt is an editor in Montana ; Persis Boynton a mer-
chant in Chicago. Zelotes Terry, Datus Darner, Zeryiah Rain-
forth, Barzellai Stanton, Sardis Clark, Ozias Williams, Xenas
Phelps, Converse Hopkins, and Hirodshai Blake, are names

154 GREATER BRITAIN. [ctur. xx.

with which I have met. Zilpha, Huldah, Nabby, Basetha;
Minnesota, and Semantha, are New England ladies ; while one
gentleman of Springfield, lately married, caught a Tartia. One
of the earliest enemies of the Mormons was Palatiah Allen ;
one of their first converts Preserved Harris. Taking the
pedigree of Joe Smith, the Mormon prophet, as that of a
representative New England family, we shall find that his
aunts were Lovisa and Lovina Mack, Dolly Smith, Eunice and
Miranda Pearce ; his uncles, Royal, Ira, and Bushrod Smith.
His grandfather's name was Asael ; of his great aunts one was
Hephzibah, another Hypsebeth, and another Vasta. The pro-
phet's eldest brother's name was Alvin; his youngest, Don
Carlos; his sister, Sophronia; and his sister-in-law, Jerusha,
Smith; while a nephew was christened Chilon. One of the
nieces was Levira, and another Rizpah. The first wife of
George A. Smith, the prophet's cousin, is Bathsheba, and his
eldest daughter also bears this name.

In the smaller towns near Placerville, there is still a wide
field for the discovery of character as well as gold ; but eccen-
tricity among the diggers here seems chiefly to waste itself on
food. The luxury of this Pacific country is amazing. The
restaurants and cafe's of each petty digging-town put forth
. bills-of-fare which the " Trois Freres " could not equal for inge-
nuity ; wine lists such as Delmonico's cannot beat. The
facilities are great : except in the far interior or on the hills,
one even spring reigns unchangeably — summer in all except
the heat ; every fruit and vegetable of the world is perpetually
in season. Fruit is not named in the hotel bills-of-fare, but all
the day long there are piled in strange confusion on the tables,
Mission grapes, the Californian Bartlet pears, Empire apples
from Oregon, melons — English, Spanish, American, and Musk ;
peaches, nectarines, and fresh almonds. All comers may help
themselves, and wash down the fruit with excellent Californian-
made Sauterne. If dancing, gambling, drinking, and still
shorter cuts to the devil have their votaries among the diggers,
there is no employment upon which they so freely spend their
cash as on dishes cunningly prepared by cooks — Chinese,
Italian, Bordelais — who follow every " rush." After the doctor
and the coroner, no one makes money at the diggings like the

CSAI\ XX.J EL DORADO. 155

cook. The dishes smell of the Californian soil ; baked rock-
cod a la Buena Vista, broiled Californian quail with Russian
River bacon, Sacramento snipes on toast, Oregon ham with
champagne sauce, and a dozen other toothsome things — these
were the dishes on the Placerville bill-of-fare in an hotel which
had escaped the fire, but whose only guests were diggers and
their friends. A few Atlantic States dishes were down upon
the list : hominy, cod chowder — hardly equal, I fear, to that of
Salem — sassafras candy, and squash tart, but never a mention
of pork and molasses, dear to the Massachusetts boy. All
these good things the diggers, when " dirt is plenty," moisten
with Clicquot, or Heidsick cabinet; when returns are small,
with their excellent Sonoma wine.

Even earthquakes fail to interrupt the triumphs of the cooks.
The last " bad shake " was fourteen days ago, but it is forgotten
in the joy called forth by the discovery of a thirteenth way to
cook fresh oysters, which are brought here from the coast by
train. There is still a something in Placerville that smacks of
the time when tin-tacks were selling for their weight in gold.

Wandering through the only remaining street of Placerville
before I left for the Southern country, I saw that grapes were
marked " three cents a pound ; " but as the lowest coin known
on the Pacific shores is the ten-cent bit, the price exists but
upon paper. Three pounds of grapes, however, for " a bit " is
a practicable purchase, in which I indulged when starting on my
journey south : in the towns, you have always the hotel supply.
If the value of the smallest coin be a test of the prosperity of a
country, California must stand high. Not only is nothing less
than the bit, or fivepence, known, but when fivepence is
deducted from a "quarter," or shilling, fivepence is all you get
or give for change — a gain or loss upon which Califoruian shop-
keepers look with profound indifference.

Hearing a greater jingling of glasses from one bar-room than
from all the other hundred whisky-shops of Placerville, I
turned into it to seek the cause, and found a Vermonter
lecturing on Lincoln and the war, to an audience of some fifty
diggers. The lecturer and bar-keeper stood together within the
sacred inclosure, the one mixing his drinks, while the other
rounded off his periods in the inflated Western style. The

156 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP, xx

audience were critical and cold till near the close of the oration,
when the " corpse-revivers " they were drinking seemed to take
effect, and to be at the bottom of the stentorian shout " Thet's
bully," with which the peroration was rewarded. The Ver-
monter told me that he had come round from Panama, and was
on his way to Austin, as Placerville was " played out " since its
" claims " had " fizzled."

They have no lecture-room here at present, as it seems ; but
that there are churches, however small, appears from a paragraph
in the Placerville news-sheet of to-day, which chronicles the
removal of a Methodist meeting-house from Block A to Block
C, vice a. Catholic chapel retired, " having obtained a superior
location."

A few days were all that I could spend in the valleys that lie
between the Sierra and the Contra Costa Range, basking in a
rich sunlight, and unsurpassed in the world for climate, scenery,
and soil. This single state — one of forty-five — has twice the area
of Great Britain, the most fertile of known soils, and the sun
and sea-breeze of Greece. Western rhapsodies are the expres-
sion of the intoxication produced by such a spectacle ; but they
are outdone by facts.

For mere charm to the eye, it is hard to give the palm
between the cracks and canyons of the Sierra and the softer
vales of the Coast Range, where the hot sun is tempered by
the cool Pacific breeze, and thunder and lightning are unknown.
To one coming from the wilds of the Carson desert and of
Mirage Plains, the more sensuous beauty of the lower dells has
for the eye the relief that travellers from the coast must seek in
the loftier heights and precipices of the Yose'mite. The oak-
filled valleys of the Contra Costa Range have all the pensive
repose of the sheltered vales that lie between the Apennines
and the Adriatic from Rimini to Ancona ; but California has
the advantage in her skies. Italy has the blue, but not the
golden haze.

Nothing can be more singular than the variety of beauty that
lies hid in these Pacific slopes ; all that is best in Canada and
the Eastern States finds more than its equal here. The terrible
grandeur of Cape Trinite' on the Saguenay, and the panorama
of loveliness from the terrace at Quebec are alike outdone.

CHAP, xx.l ELDORADO. 157

Americans certainly need not go to Europe to find scenery ;
but neither need they go to California, or even Colorado.
Those who tell us that there is no such thing as natural beauty
west of the Atlantic can scarcely know the Eastern, while they
ignore the Western and Central States. The world can show
few scenes more winning than Israel's River Valley in the
White Mountains of New Hampshire, or North Conway in the
southern slopes of the same range. Nothing can be more full
of grandeur than the passage of the James at Balcony Falls,
where the river rushes through a crack in the Appalachian
chain ; the wilderness of Northern New York is unequalled of
its kind, and there are delicious landscapes in the Adirondacks.
As for river scenery, the Hudson is grander than the Rhine ;
the Susquehanna is lovelier than the Meuse; the Schuylkill
prettier than the Seine ; the Mohawk more enchanting than the
Dart. Of the rivers of North Europe, the Neckar alone is not
beaten in the States.

Americans admit that their scenery is fine, but pretend that
it is wholly wanting in the interest that historic memories
bestow. So-called Republicans atfect to find a charm in Bishop
Hatto's Tower which is wanting in Irving's " Sunnyside ; " the
ten thousand virgins of Cologne live in their fancy, while Con-
stitution Island and Fort Washington are forgotten names.
Americans or Britishers, we Saxons are all alike — a wandering,
discontented race ; we go 4000 miles to find us Sleepy Hollow,
or Killian Van Rensselaer's Castle, or Hiawatha's great red
pipestone quarry ; and the Americans, who live in the castle,
picnic yearly in the Hollow, and flood the quarry for a skating
rink, come here to England to visit Burns's house, or to sit in
Pope's arm-chair.

Down South I saw clearly the truth of a thought that struck
me before I had been ten minutes west of the Sierra Pass.
California is Saxon only in the looks and language of the people
of its towns. In Pennsylvania, you may sometimes fancy your-
self in Sussex ; while in New England, you seem only to be in
some part of Europe that you have never happened to light
upon before ; in California, you are at last in a new world.
The hills are weirdly peaked or flattened, the skies are new, the
birds and plants are new ; the atmosphere, crisp though warm,

I5» GREATER BRITAIN. IOIIAP. xx.

is unbke any in the world but that of South Australia. It will
be strange if the Pacific coast does not produce a new school of
Saxon poets — painters it has already given to the world.

Returning to Placerville, after an eventless exploration of the
exquisite scenery to the south, I took the railway once again,
for the first time since I had left Manhattan City — 1800 miles
away — and was soon in Sacramento, the State capital, now re-
covering slowly from the flood of 1862. Near the city I made
out Oak Grove — famed for duels between well-known Cali-
fornians. Here it was that General Denver, State senator, shot
Mr. Gilbert, the representative in Congress, in a duel fought
with rifles. Here, too, it was that Mr. Thomas, district
attorney for Placer county, killed Dr. Dickson, of the Marine
Hospital, in a duel with pistols in 1854. Records of duels
form a serious part of the State history. At Lone Mountain
Cemetery near San Francisco, there is a great marble monu-
ment to the Hon. David Broderick, shot by Chief Justice
Terry, of the Supreme Court, in 1859.

A few hours' quiet steaming in the sunlight down the
Sacramento River, past Rio Vista and Montezuma, through the
gap in the Contra Costa Range, at which the grand volcanic
peak of Monte Diablo stands sentinel watching over the
Martinez Straits, and there opened to the south and west a vast
mountain-surrounded bay. Volumes of cloud were rolling in
unceasingly from the ocean, through the Golden Gate, past the
fortified island of Alcatras, and spending themselves in the
opposite shores of San Rafael, Benicia, and Vallejo. At last I
was across the continent, and face to face with the Pacific.

159

CHAPTER XXI.
LYNCH LAW.

"CALIFORNIANS are called the scum of the earth, yet their great
city is the best policed in the world," said a New York friend
to me, when he heard that I thought of crossing the continent
to San Francisco.

" Them New Yorkers is a sight too fond of looking after
other people's morals," replied an old "Forty-niner," to whom.
I repeated this phrase, having first toned it down, however.
" Still," he went on, " our history's baddish, but it ain't for us to
play showman to our own worst pints : — let every man skin his
own skunk !"

The story of the early days of San Francisco, as to which my
curiosity was thus excited, is so curious an instance of the
development of an English community under the most in-
auspicious circumstances, that the whole time which I spent in
the city itself I devoted to hearing the tale from those who
knew the actors. Not only is the history of the two Vigilance
Committees in itself characteristic, but it works in with what I
had gathered in Kansas, Illinois, and Colorado as to the opera-
tion of the claim-clubs ; and the stories, taken together, form a
typical picture of the rise of a New English country.

The discovery of gold in 1848 brought down on luckless
California the idle, the reckless, the vagabonds first of Polynesia,
then of all the world. Street fighting, public gaming, masked
balls given by unknown women and paid for nobody knew how,
but attended by governor, supervisors, and alcade — all these
were minor matters by the side of the general undefined
ruffianism of the place. Before the end of 1849, San Francisco
presented on a gigantic scale much the same appearance that
Helena in Montana wears in 1866.

160 GREATER BEITAIN. [CHAP. MI.

Desperadoes poured in from all sides, the best of the bad
flocking off to the mines, while the worst among the villains —
those who lacked energy as well as moral sense — remained in
the city, to raise by thieving or in the gambling-booth the "pile"
that they were too indolent to earn by pick and pan. Hundreds
of " emancipists " from Sydney, " old Jags " from Norfolk Island,
the pick of the criminals of England, still further trained and
confirmed in vice and crime by the experiences of Macquarie
Harbour and Port Arthur, rushed to San Francisco to continue
a career which the vigilance of the police made hopeless in
Tasmania and New South Wales. The floating vice of the
Pacific ports of South America soon gathered to a spot where
there were not only men to fleece, but men who, being fleeced,
could pay. The police were necessarily few, for, appoint a man
to-day, and to-morrow he was gone to the Placers with some
new friend ; those who could be prevailed upon to remain a
fortnight in the force were accessible to bribes from the men
they were set to watch. They themselves admitted their inac-
tion, but ascribed it to the continual change of place among
the criminals, which prevented the slightest knowledge of their
characters and haunts. The Australian gaol-birds formed a
quarter known as " Sydney Town," which soon became what
the Bay of Islands had been ten years before — the Alsatia of
the Pacific. In spite of daily murders, not a single criminal
was hanged.

The ruffians did not all agree : there were jealousies among
the various bands ; feuds between the Australians and Chilians ;
between the Mexicans and the New Yorkers. Under the various
names of "Hounds," "Regulators," "Sydney Ducks," and "Sydney
Coves," the English convict party organized themselves in oppo-
sition to the Chilenos as well as to the police and law-abiding
citizens, Gangs of villains, whose sole bond of union was
robbery or murder, marched, armed with bludgeons and
revolvers, every Sunday afternoon, to the sound of music, un-
hindered through the streets, professing that they were "guardians
of the community " against the Spaniards, Mexicans, and South
Americans.

At last a movement took place among the merchants and
reputable inhabitants which resulted in the break-up of

OUP. xii.] LYNCH LAW. l6t

Australian gangs. By an uprising of the American citizens o!
San Francisco, in response to a proclamation by T. M. Leaven-
worth, the alcade, twenty of the most notorious among the
" Hounds " were seized and shipped to China : it is believed
that some were taken south in irons, and landed near Cape
Horn. " Anywhere so that they could not come back," as my
informant said.

For a week or two things went well, but a fresh in-pour of
rogues and villains soon swamped the volunteer police by sheer
force of numbers; and in February, 1851, occurred an instance
of united action among the citizens, which is noticeable as the
forerunner of the Vigilance Committees. A Mr. Jansen had
been stunned by a blow from a slung shot, and his person and
premises rifled by Australian thieves. During the examination
of two prisoners arrested on suspicion, five thousand citizens
gathered round the City Hall, and handbills were circulated, in
which it was proposed that the prisoners should be lynched. In
the afternoon, an attempt to seize the men was made, but
repulsed by another section of the citizens — the Washington
guard. A meeting was held on the Plaza, and a committee
appointed to watch the authorities, and. prevent a release. A
well-known citizen, Mr. Brannan, made a speech, in which he
said : " We, the people, are the mayor, the recorder, and the
laws." The alcade addressed the crowd, and suggested, by way
of compromise, that they should elect a jury which should sit
in the regular court, and try the prisoners. This was refused,
and the people elected not only a jury, but three judges, a
sheriff, a clerk, a public prosecutor, and two counsel for the
defence. This court then tried the prisoners in their absence,
and the jury failed to agree — nine were for conviction, and three
were doubtful. " Hang 'em, anyhow ; majority rules," was the
shout, but the popular judges stood firm, and discharged their
jury, while the people acquiesced. The next day, the prisoners
were tried and convicted by the regular court, although they
were ultimately found to be innocent men.

Matters now went from bad to worse : five times San Fran-
cisco was swept from end to end by fires known to have been
helped on, if not originally kindled, by incendiaries in the hope
of plunder; and when, by the fires of May and June, 1851,

i6i GREATER BlttTAtN. fcHXP. sU

hardly a house was left untouched, the pious Bostonians held
up their hands, and cried " Gomorrah I"

Immediately after the discovery that the June fire was not
an accident, the Vigilance Committee was formed, being self-
appointed, and consisting of the foremost merchants in the
place. This was on the 7th of June, according to my friend;
on the gth, according to the Californian histories. It was
rumoured that the Committee consisted of two hundred citizens »
it was known that they were supported by the whole of the city
press. They published a declaration, in which they stated that
there is " no security for life or property under the . . . law as
now administered." This they ascribed to the " quibbles of the
law, "the "corruption of the police, "the " insecurity of prisons,"
the " laxity of those who pretend to administer justice." The
secret instructions to the Committee contained a direction that
the members should at once assemble at the committee-room
whenever signals consisting of two taps on a bell were heard at
intervals of one minute. The Committee was organized with
President, Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer, Sergeant-at-arms,
standing Committee on Qualifications, and standing Committee
of Finance. No one was to be admitted a member unless he
were " a respectable citizen, and approved by the Committee
on Qualifications."

The very night of their organization, according to the histo-
ries, or three nights later, according to my friend Mr. A ,

the work of the Committee began. Some boatmen at Central
Wharf saw something which Jed them to follow out into the
Yerba Buena cove a man, whom they captured after a sharp
row. As they overhauled him, he threw overboard a safe, just
stolen from a bank, but this was soon fished out. He was at
once carried off to the committee-room of the Vigilants, and the
bell of the Monumental Engine Company struck at intervals,
as the rule prescribed. Not only the Committee, but a vast
surging crowd collected, although midnight was now past.

A was on the Plaza, and says that every man was armed,

and evidently disposed to back up the Committee. Accord-
ing to the California Alta, the chief of the police came up
a little before i A.M., and tried to force an entrance to the
room • but he was met, politely enough, with a show of re-

tt.] LYNCti LAW. 163

volvers sufficient to annihilate his men, so he judged it prudent
to retreat.

At one o'clock the bell of the engine-house began to toll,
and the crowd became excited. Mr. Brannan came out of the
committee-room, and, standing on a mound of sand, addressed
the citizens. As well as my friend could remember, his words
were these : " Gentlemen, the man — Jenkins by name — a
Sydney convict, whose supposed offence you know, has had a
fair trial before eighty gentlemen, and been unanimously found
guilty by them. I have been deputed by the Committee to ask,
whether it is your pleasure that he be hanged ?" " Ay !" from
every man in the crowd. " He will be given an hour to pre-
pare for death, and the Rev. Mr. Mines has been already sent
for to minister to him. Is this your pleasure ?" Again a storm
of " Ay !" Nothing was known in the crowd of the details of
the trial, except that counsel had been heard on the prisoner's
behalf. For another hour the excitement of the crowd was
permitted to continue, but at two o'clock the doors of the
committee-room were thrown open, and Jenkins was seen

smoking a cigar. Mr. A said that he did not believe the

prisoner expected a rescue, but thought that an exhibition of
pluck might make him popular with the crowd, and save him.
A procession of Vigilants with drawn Colts was then formed,
and set off in the moonlight across the four chief streets to the
Plaza. Some of the people shouted " To the flagstaff !" but
there came a cry, " Don't desecrate the Liberty Pole. To the
old adobe ! the old adobe !" and to the old adobe custom-house
the prisoner was dragged. In five minutes he was hanging
from the roof, three hundred citizens lending a hand at the

rope. At six in the morning A went home, but he heard

that the police cut down the body about that time, and carried
it to the coroner's house.

An inquest was held next day. The city officers swore that
they had done all they could to prevent the execution, but
tliey refused to give up the names of the Vigilance Committee.
The members themselves were less cautious. Mr. Brannan
and others came forward of their own proper motion, and dis-
closed all the circumstances of the trial. One hundred and
forty of the Committee backed them up by a written protestation

M 2

164 OttEATER S&tTAttf. [CHAP, m

against interference with the Vigilants, to which their signatures
were appended. Protest and evidence have been published,
not only in the newspapers of the time, but in the San Francisco
"Annals." The coroner's jury found a verdict of " Strangula-
tion, consequent on the concerted action of a body of citizens
calling themselves a Committee of Vigilance." An hour after
the verdict was given, a mass meeting of the whole of the re-
spectable inhabitants was held in the Plaza, and a resolution
approving of the action of the Committee passed by acclama-
tion.

In July, 1851, the Committee hanged another man on the
Market-street wharf, and appointed a sub-committee of thirty
to board every ship that crossed the bar, seize all persons sus-
pected of being " Sydney Coves," and re-ship them to New
South Wales.

In August came the great struggle between the Vigilants and
constituted authority. It was sharp and decisive. Whittaker
and M°Kenzie, two Sydney Coves, were arrested by the Com-
mittee for various crimes, and sentenced to death. The next
day, Sheriff Hayes seized them on a writ of habeas corpus, in
the rooms of the Committee. The bell was tolled ; the citizens
assembled, the Vigilants told their story, the men were seized
once more, and by noon they were hanging from the loft of the
committee-house, by the ordinary lifting tackle for heavy goods.
Fifteen thousand people were present, and approved. " After

this," said A , " there could be no mistake about the

citizens supporting the Committee."

By September, the Vigilants had transported all the " Coves "
on whom they could lay hands; so they issued a proclamation,
declaring that for the future they would confine themselves to
aiding the law by tracing out and guarding criminals; and in
pursuance of their decision, they soon afterwards helped the
authorities in preventing the lynching of a ship-captain for
cruelty to his men.

After the great sweep of 1851, things became steadily worse
again till they culminated in 1855, a year to which my friend
looked back with horror. Not counting Indians, there were
four hundred persons died by violence in California in that
jingle year. Fifty of these were lynched, a dozen were hanged

CHAP, xxi.] LYNCH LAW. 165

by law, a couple of dozen shot by the sheriffs and tax-collectors
in the course of their duty. The officers did not escape scot
free. The under-sheriff of San Francisco was shot in Mission
Street, in broad daylight, by a man upon whom he was trying
'.o execute a writ of ejectment.

Judges, mayors, supervisors, politicians, all were bad alike.
The merchants of the city were from New England, New York,
and foreign lands ; but the men who assumed the direction of
public affairs, and especially of public funds, were Southerners,
many of them " Border Ruffians " of the most savage stamp —
" Pikes," as they were called, from Pike's County in Missouri,
from which their leaders came. Instead of banding themselves
together to oppose the laws, these rogues and ruffians found it
easier to control the making of them. Their favourite method
of defeating their New England foes was by the simple plan of
" stuffing," or filling the ballot-box with forged tickets when the
elections were concluded. Two Irishmen — Casey and Sullivan
— were their tools in this shameful work. Werth, a Southerner,
the leader of Casey's gang, had been denounced in the San
Francisco Bulletin as the murderer of a man named Kittering ;
and Casey, meeting James King, editor of the Bulletin, shot
him dead in Montgomery Street in the middle of the day.
Casey and one of his assistants — a man named Cora — were
hanged by the people as Mr. King's body was being carried to
the grave, and Sullivan committed suicide the same day.

Books were opened for the enrolment of the names of those
who were prepared to support the Committee : nine thousand
grown white males inscribed themselves within four days.
Governor Johnson at once declared that he should suppress
the Committee, but the city of Sacramento prevented war by
offering a thousand men for the Vigilants' support, the other
Californian cities following suit. The Committee got together
6000 stand of arms and thirty cannon, and fortified their rooms
with earthworks and barricades. The Governor, having called
on the general commanding the Federal forces at Benicia, who
wisely refused to interfere, marched upon the city, was sur-
rounded, and taken prisoner with all his forces without the
Striking of a blow.

Having now obtained the control of the State governm«?i>t,

1 66 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xxi.

the Committee proceeded to banish all the " Pikes " and
" Pukes." Four were hanged, forty transported, and many
ran away. This done, the Committee prepared an elaborate
report upon the property and finances of the State, and thea
after a great parade, ten regiments strong, upon the Plaza and
through the streets, they adjourned for ever, and " the thirty-
three " and their ten thousand backers retired into private life
once more, and put an end to this singular spectacle of the
rebellion of a free people against rulers nominally elected by
itself. As my friend said, when he finished his long yarn,
" This has more than archaeologic interest : we may live to see
a similar Vigilance Committee in New York."

For my own part, I do not believe that an uprising against bad
government is possible in New York City, because there the sup-
porters of bad government are a majority of the people. Their
interest is the other way : in increased city taxes they evidently
lose far more than, as a class, they gain by what is spent among
them in corruption ; but when they come to see this, they will
not rebel against their corrupt leaders, but elect those whom
they can trust. In San Francisco, the case was widely different :
through the ballot frauds, a majority of the citizens were being
infamously misgoverned by a contemptible minority, and the
events of 1856 were only the necessary acts of the majority to
regain their power, coupled with certain exceptional acts in the
shape of arbitrary transportation of " Pikes " and Southern
rowdies, justified by the exceptional circumstances of the young
community. At Melbourne, under circumstances somewhat
similar, our English colonists, instead of setting up a committee,
built Pentridge Stockade with walls thirty feet high, and created
a military police, with almost arbitrary power. The difference
is one of words. The whirl of life in a young gold country not
only prevents the best men entering the political field, and so
forces citizens to exercise their right of choice only between
candidates of equal badness, but so engrosses the members of
the community who exercise the ballot as to prevent the detec-
tion of fraud till it has ruled for years. Throughout young
countries generally you find men say : " Yes ! we're robbed, we
know; but no one has time to go into that." " I'm for the old
men," said a California,n elector gnce, " for they've plundered

CHAP, xxi.] LYNCH LAW. 167

us so long that they're gorged, and can't swallow any more."
" No," said another, " let's have fresh blood. Give every man
a chance of robbing the State. Share and share alike." The
wonder is, not that in such a State as California was till lately
the machinery of government should work unevenly, but that
it should work at all. Democracy has never endured so rough
a test as that from which it has triumphantly emerged in the
Golden State and City.

The public spirit with which the merchants came forward
and gave time and money to the cause of order is worthy of all
praise, and the rapidity with which the organization of a new
government was carried through is an instance of the singular
power of our race for building up the machinery of self-govern-
ment under conditions the most unpromising. Instead of the
events of 1856 having been a case of opposition to law and
order, they will stand in history as a remarkable proof of the
law-abiding character of a people who vindicated justice by a
demonstration of overwhelming force, laid down their arms, and
returned in a few weeks to the peaceable routine of business
life.

If, in the merchant founders of the Vigilance Committees of
San Francisco we can see the descendants of the justice-loving
Germans of the time of Tacitus, I found in another class of
vigilants the moral offspring of Alfred's village aldermen of our
own Saxon age. From Mr. William M. Byers, now editor of
the Rocky Mountains Neivs, I had heard the story of the early
settlers' land-law in Missouri; in Stanton's office in Denver
City, I had seen the records of the Arapahoe county claim-club,
with which he had been connected at the first settlement of
Colorado ; but at San Jose", I heard details of the settlers'
custom-law — the Californian " grand-coutumier," it might be
called — which convinced me that, in order to find the rudiments
of all that, politically speaking, is best and most vigorous in the
Saxon mind, you must seek countries in which Saxon civilization
itself is in its infancy. The greater the difficulties of the situa-
tion, the more racy the custom, the more national the law.

When a new State began to be " settled up " — that is, its
lands entered upon by actual settlers, not land- sharks — the
inhabitant? Qften found themselves in the wilderness, far in

168 GREATER BRITAIN. CIUP. XXL

advance of attorneys, courts, and judges. It was their custom
when this occurred to divide the territory into districts of fifteen
or twenty miles square, and form for each a " claim-club " to
protect the land-claims, or property of the members. When-
ever a question of title arose, a judge and jury were chosen
from among the members to hear and determine the case. The
occupancy title was invariably protected up to a certain number
of acres, which was differently fixed by different clubs, and
varied in those of which I have heard the rules from 100 to 250
acres, averaging 150. The United States' "Homestead" and
" Pre-emption " laws were founded on the practice of these
clubs. The claim-clubs interfered only for the protection of
their members, but they never scrupled to hang wilful offenders
against their rules, whether members or outsiders. Execution
of the decrees of the club was generally left to the county
sheriff, if he was a member, and in this case a certain air of
legality was given to the local action. It is perhaps not too
much to say that a Western sheriff is an irresponsible official,
possessed of gigantic powers, but seldom known to abuse them.
He is a Caesar, chosen for his honesty, fearlessness, clean shoot
ing, and quick loading, by men who know him well : if he
breaks down, he is soon deposed, and a better man chosen for
dictator. I have known a Western paper say : " Frank is our
man for sheriff, next October. See the way he shot one of the
fellows who robbed his store, and followed up the other, and
shot him too the next day. Frank is the boy for us." In such
a state of society as this, the distinction between law and lynch-
law can scarcely be said to exist, and in the eyes of every^
Western settler the claim-club backed by the sheriff's name was
as strong and as full of the majesty of the law as the Supreme
Court of the United States. Mr. Byers told me of a case of
the infliction of death-punishment by a claim-club which occurred
in Kansas after the " Homestead " law was passed allowing the
occupant, when he had tilled and improved the land for five
years, to purchase it at one and a quarter dollars an acre. A
man settled on a piece of land, and laboured on it for some
years. He then " sold it," which he had, of course, no power
to do, the land being still the property of the United States.
Having apne this? he went and "pre-empted" it under th$

CHAP. xxi. J LYNCH LAW. 169

Homestead Act, at the government price. When he attempted
to eject the man to whom he had assumed to sell, the club
ordered the sheriff to " put the man away," and he was never
seen again. Perhaps Mr. Byers was the sheriff; he seemed to
have the details at his fingers' ends, and his later history in
Denver, where he once had the lynching rope round his neck
for exposing gamblers, testifies to his boldness.

Some of the rascalities which the claim-clubs were expected
to put down were ingenious enough. A man would build a
dozen houses on a block of land, and, going there to enter on
possession after they were complete, would find that in the
night the whole of them had disappeared. Frauds under the
Homestead Act were both many and strange. Men were
required to prove that they had on the land a house of at least
ten feet square. They have been known to whittle out a toy-
house with their bowie, and, carrying it to the land, to measure
it in the presence of a friend — twelve inches by thirteen. In
court the pre-emptor, examining his own witness, would say,
" What are the dimensions of that house of mine ?" " Twelve
by thirteen." "*That will do." In Kansas, a log-house of the
regulation size was fitted up on wheel-s, and let at ten dollars a
day, in order that it might be wheeled on to different lots, to be
sworn to as a house upon the land. Men have been known to
make a window-sash and frame, and keep them inside of their
windowless huts, to swear that they had a window in their house
— another of the requirements of the Act. It is a singular
mark of deference to the traditions of a Puritan ancestry that
such accomplished liars as the Western land-sharks should feel
it necessary to have any foundation whatever for their lies ; but
not only in this respect are they a curious race. One of their
peculiarities is that, however wealthy they may be, they will
never place their money out at interest, never sink it in a spe-
culation, however tempting, when there is no prospect of almost
immediate realization. To turn their money over often, at
whatever risk, is with these men an axiom. The advance-guard
of civilization, they push out into an unknown wilderness, and
seize upon the available lots, the streams, the springs, the river
bottoms, the falls or "water-privileges," and then, using their
interest in the territorial legislature — using, perhaps, direct cor-
ruption i» some cases— they procure the location of the State

170 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xxi.

capital upon their lands, or the passage of the railroads through
their valleys. The capital of Nebraska has been fixed in this
manner at a place two hundred and fifty miles from the nearest
settlement. A newspaper appeared suddenly, dated from " Lin-
coln City, centre of Nebraska territory," but published in reality
in Omaha. To cope with such fellow? Western sheriffs must
be no ordinary men.

Thanks to the Vigilance Committees, California stands now
before the other Far-Western States. Rowdyism is being put
down as the God-fearing Northerners gain ground. It may still
be dangerous to stroke your beard in a bar-room at Placerville
or El Dorado ; " a gentleman in the loafing and chancing line "
may still be met with in Sacramento ; here and there a Mis-
sourian " Pike," as yet unhung, may boast that he can whip his
weight in wild-cats ; but San Francisco has at least reached the
age of outward decorum, has shut up public gaming-houses, and
supports four Church papers.

In Colorado, Lynch-law is not as yet forgotten : the day we
entered Denver, the editor of the Gazette expressed, " on his-
torical grounds," his deep regret at the cutting-down of two fine
cotton wood-trees that stood on Cherry Creek. When we came
to talk to him, we found that the " history " alluded to was that
of the " escape up " these trees of many an early inhabitant of
Denver City. " There's the tree we used to put the jury under,
and that's the one we hanged 'em on. Put a cart under the
tree, and the boy standing on it, with the rope around him ;
give him time for a pray, then smack the whip, and ther' you
air."

In Denver we were reserved upon the subject of Vigilance
Committees, for it is dangerous sometimes to make close inqui-
ries as to their constitution. While I was in Leavenworth, a
man was hanged by the mob at Council Bluffs for asking the
names of the Vigilants who had hanged a friend of his the year
before. We learnt enough, however, at Denver to show that
the Committee in that city still exists ; and in Virginia and
Carson I know that the organizations are continued ; but
offenders are oftener shot quietly than publicly hanged, in order
to prevent an outcry, and avoid the vengeance of the relatives.
The verdict of the jury never fails to be respected, but acquittal
is almost as unknown as mercy to those convicted. Innocent

CHAP, xxi.] LYNCH LAW. 171

men are seldom tried before such juries, for the case must be
clear before the sheriff will run the risk of being shot in making
the arrest. When the man's fate is settled, the sheriff drives
out quietly in his buggy, and next day men say when they meet,

"Poor 's escaped;" or else it is, "The sheriff's shot.

Who'll run for office ?"*

It will be seen from the history of the Vigilance Committees,
as I heard their stories from Kansas to California, that they are
to be divided into two classes, with sharply-marked characteris-
tics— those where Committee, hangings, transportations, warn-
ings, are alike open to the light of day, such as the Committees
of San Francisco in 1856, and the Sandwich Islands in 1866,
and those— unhappily the vast majority — where all is secret
and irresponsible. Here, in San Francisco, the Committee was
the government ; elsewhere, the organization was less wide,
and the members, though always shrewdly guessed at, never
known. Neither class should be necessary, unless when a gold
rush brings down upon a State the desperadoes of the world ;
but there is this encouragement even in the history of Lynch-
law : that, although English settlements often start wild, they
never have been known to go wild.

The men who formed the second Vigilance Committee of
San Francisco are now the governor, senators, and Congress-
men of California, the mayors and sheriffs of her towns. Now-
a-days the citizens are remarkable for their love of law and
order. Their city, though still subject to a yearly deluge from
the outpourings of all the overcrowded slums of Europe, is, as
the New Yorker said, the best policed in all America. In
politics, too, it is remarked that party organizations have no
power in this State from the moment that they attempt to
nominate corrupt or time-serving men. The people break
loose from their caucuses and conventions, and vote in a body
for their honest enemies rather than for corrupt friends. They
have the advantage of singular ability, for there is not an
average man in California.

, * Even in Iowa, a comparatively old and settled State, where capital
punishment has lately been " abolished," a large number of offenders have
since been lynched, of whom one was actually hanged io the Court-house
•«f the capita) city itsejfc .

IJ2 GREATER BRITAIN. I CHAP, xitt

CHAPTER XXII.

GOLDEN CITY.

THE first letter which I delivered in San Francisco was from a
Mormon gentleman to a merchant, who, as he read it, ex-
claimed : " Ah ! so you want to see the lions ? I'll pick you
up at three, and take you there" I wondered, but went, as
travellers do.

At the end of a pleasant drive along the best road in all
America, I found myself upon a cliff overhanging the Pacific,
with a glorious outlook, seawards towards the Farallones, and
northwards to Cape Benita and the Golden Gate. Beneath, a
few hundred yards from shore, was a conical rock, covered with
shapeless monsters, plashing the water and roaring ceaselessly,
while others swam around. These were " the lions," my
acquaintance said — the sea-lions. I did not enter upon an
explanation of our slang phrase, " the lions," which the
Mormon, himself an Englishman, no doubt had used, but took
the first opportunity of seeing the remainder of " the lions " of
the Golden City.

The most remarkable spot in all America is Mission Dolores,
in the outskirts of San Francisco City — once a settlement of the
Society of Jesus. Nowhere has the conflict between the Saxon
and Latin races been so sharp and so decisive. For eighty or
ninety years California was first Spanish, then Mexican, then a
half independent Spanish- American republic. The progress of
those ninety years was shown in the foundation of half-a-dozen
Jesuit " missions," which held each of them a thousand or two
tame Indians as slaves, while a few military settlers and their
friends divided the interior with the savage tribes. Gold,
which had been discovered here by Drake, was never sought;

CHAP, xxii.] GOLDEN CITY. 173

the fathers, like the Mormon chiefs, discouraged mining; it
interfered with their tame Indians. Here and there, in four
cases, perhaps in all, a presidio, or castle, had been built for
the protection of the mission, and a puebla, or tiny free town,
had been suffered to grow up, not without remonstrance from
the fathers. Los Angeles had thus sprung from the mission of
that name, the fishing village of Yerba Buena, from Mission
Dolores on the bay of San Francisco, and San Jose, from Santa
Clara. In 1846, Fremont the Pathfinder conquered the country
with forty-two men, and now it has a settled population of nearly
half a million ; * San Francisco is as large as Newcastle or
Hull, as flourishing as Liverpool, and the Saxon blanket factory
has replaced the Spanish mission.

The story might have served as a warning to the French
Emperor, when he sent ships and men to found a " Latin
empire in America."

Between the presidio and the Mission Dolores lies Lone
Mountain Cemetery, in that solitary calm and majesty of beauty
which befits a home for the dead, the most lovely of all the
cemeteries of America. Queen Emma, of the Sandwich Islands,
who is here at present, said of it yesterday to a Californian
merchant : " How comes it that you Americans, who live so
fast, find time to bury your dead so beautifully ?"

Lone Mountain is not the only delicious spot that is given to
the American dead. Laurel Hill, Mount Auburn, Greenwood,
Cypress Grove, Hollywood, Oak Hill, are names not more full
of poetry than are the places to which they belong ; but Lone
Mountain has over all an advantage in its giant fuchsias, and
'scarlet geraniums of the size and shape of trees ; in the distant
glimpses, too, of the still Pacific.

San Francisco is ill placed, so far as mere building facilities
are concerned. When the first houses were built in 1845 and
1846, they stood on a strip of beach surrounding the sheltered
cove of Yerba Buena, and at the foot of the steep and lofty
sand-hills. Dunes and cove have disappeared together; the
hills have been shot bodily into the bay, and the former harbour
is now the business quarter of the city. Not a street can be
built without cutting down a hill, or filling up a glen. Never
* Now enormously increased*

174 GREATER BRTTAtif. (ettAl>- till

was a great town built under heavier difficulties ; but trade
requires it to be exactly where it is, and there it will remain and
grow. Its former rivals, Vallejo and Benicia, are grass-grown
villages, in spite of their having had the advantage of " a perfect
situation." While the spot on which the Golden City stands
was still occupied by the struggling village of Yerba Buena,
Francisca was a rising city, where corner lots were worth their
ten or twenty thousand dollars. When the gold rush came, the
village, shooting to the front, voted itself the name of its great
bay, and Francisca had to change its title to Benicia, in order
not to be thought a mere suburb of San Francisco. The mouth
of the Columbia was once looked to as the future haven of
Western America, and point of convergence of the railroad
lines ; but the " centre of the universe " has not more com-
pletely removed from Independence to Fort Riley than Astoria
has yielded to San Francisco the claim to be the port of the
Pacific.

The one great danger of this coast all its cities share in
common. Three times within the present century, the spot
on which San Francisco stands has been violently disturbed by
subterranean forces. The earthquake of last year has left its
mark upon Montgomery Street and the Plaza, for it frightened
the San Franciscans into putting up light wooden cornices to
hotels and banks, instead of the massive stone projections that
are common in the States ; otherwise, though lesser shocks are
daily matters, the San Franciscans have forgotten the " great
scare." * A year is a long time in California. There is little
of thff earliest San Francisco left, though the city is only.
eighteen years old. Fires have done good work as well as
harm, and it is worth a walk up to the Plaza to see how prim
and starched are the houses which now occupy a square three
sides of which were, in 1850, given up to the public gaming-
hells.

One of the few remaining bits of old Golden City life is to be
found in the neighbourhood of the " What Cheer House," the
resting-place of diggers on their way from the interior to take
ship for New York or Europe. Here there is no lack of coin,

* Since this was written the Lower Town has been greatly shaken by
the earthquake of 1 868.

OOLDRS cnr. 175

no want of oaths, no scarcity of drinks. " Juleps " are as
plentiful as in Baltimore itself; Yerba Buena, the old name for
San Francisco, means " mint."

If the old character of the city is gone, there are still odd
scenes to be met with in its streets. To-day I saw a master
builder of great wealth with his coat and waistcoat off, and
his hat stowed away on one side, carefully teaching a raw Irish
lad how to lay a brick. He told me that the acquisition of the
art would bring the man an immediate rise in his wages of
from five to ten shillings a day. Unskilled labour, Mexican
and Chinese, is plentiful enough, but white artisans are scarce.
The want of servants is such, that even the wealthiest in-
habitants live with their wives and families in hotels, to avoid
the cost and trouble of an establishment. Those who have
houses pay rough unker»pt Irish girls from £6 to ,£8 a month,
with board, " outings " when they please, and " followers " un-
limited.

The hotel boarding has much to do with the somewhat
unwomanly manner of a few among the ladies of the newest
States, but the effect upon the children is more marked than it
is upon their mothers. To a woman of wealth, it matters,
perhaps, but little whether she rules a household of her own,
or boards in the first floor of some gigantic hostelry; but it
does matter a great deal to her children, who, in the one case,
have a home to play and work in, and who, in the other, play
on the stairs or in the corridors, to the annoyance of every
sojounier in the hotel, and never dream of work out of school-
hours, or of solid reading that is not compulsory. The only
one of the common charges brought against America in
English society and in English books and papers that is
thoroughly true, is the statement that American children, as a
rule, are "forward," ill-mannered, and immoral. An American
can scarcely be found who does not admit and deplore the
fact. With the self-exposing honesty that is a characteristic of
their nation, American gentlemen will talk by the hour of the
terrible profligacy of the young New Yorkers. Boys, they tell
you, who in England would be safe in the lower school at
Eton or in well-managed houses, in New York or New Orleans
are deep gamesters and God-defying rowdies. In new Eng-

176 GREATER ZRtTAtN. [CIIAA «ft

land, things are better; in the West, there is yet time to
prevent the ill arising ; but even in the most old-fash _oned of
American States, the children are far too full of self-assurance.
Their faults are chiefly faults of manner, but such in children
have a tendency to become so m?ny vices. On my way home
from Egypt, I crossed the Simplon with a Southerner and a
Pennsylvanian boy of fourteen or fifteen. An English boy
would have expressed his opinion, and been silent : this lad's
attacks upon the poor Southerner were unceasing and unfeel-
ing ; yet I could see that he was good at bottom. I watched
my chance to give him my view of his conduct, and when we
parted, he came tip and shook hands, saying : " You're not a
bad fellow for an Englishman, after all."

In my walks through the city, 1 found its climate agreeable
rather for work than idleness. Sauntering or lounging is as
little possible as it is in London. The summer is not yet
ended ; and in the summer at San Francisco, it is cold after
eleven in the day — strangely cold for the latitude of Athens.
The fierce sun scorches up the valleys of the San Joaquin and
the Sacramento in the early morning; and the heated air,
rising from off the ground, leaves its place to be filled by the
cold breeze from the Pacific. The Contra Costa Range is
unbroken but by the single gap of the Golden Gate, and
through this opening the cold winds rush in a never-ceasing
gale, spreading fan-like as soon as they have passed the
narrows. Hence it is that the Golden Gate is called " The
Keyhole," and the wind " The Keyhole Breeze." Up country,
they make it raise the water for irrigation. In winter, there is
a calm, and then the city is as sunny as the rest of California.

So purely local is the bitter gale, that at Benicia, ten miles
from San Francisco, the mean temperature is ten degrees
higher for the year, and nearly twenty for the summer. I have
stood on the shore at Benicia when the thermometer was at a
hundred in the shade, and seen the clouds pouring in from the
Pacific, and hiding San Francisco in a murky pall, while the
temperature there was under seventy degrees. This fog retaided
by a hundred years the discovery of San Francisco Bay. The
entrance to the Golden Gate is narrow, and the mists hang
there all day. Cabrillo, Drake, Viscaino, sailed past ;t without

CttAP. *Xtt.J GOLDEN CITY. \11

seeing that there was a bay, and the great land-locked sea was
first beheld by white men when the missionaries came upon
its anus and creeks, far away inland.

The peculiarity of climate carries with it great advantages.
It is never too hot, never too cold, to work — a fact which of
itself secures a grand future for San Francisco. The effect
upon national type is marked. At a San Franciscan ball, you
see English faces, not American. Even the lean Western men
and hungry Yankees become plump and rosy in this temple of
the winds. The high metallic ring of the New England voice is
not found in San Francisco. As for old men, California must
have been that fabled province of Cathay the virtues of which
were such that, whatever a man's age when he entered it, he
never grew older by a day. To dogs and strangers there are
drawbacks in the absence of winter : dogs are muzzled all the
year round, and mosquitoes are perennial upon the coast.

The city is gay with flags ; every house supports a Liberty
pole upon its roof, for when the Union sentiment sprang up in
San Francisco, at the beginning of the war, public opinion
forced the citizens to make a conspicuous exhibition of the
Stars and Stripes by way of showing that it was from no want
of loyalty that they refused to permit the circulation of the
Federal greenbacks. In this matter of flags, the sea-gale is of
service, for were it not for its friendly assistance, a short house
between two tall ones could not sport a huge flag with much
effect. As it is, the wind always blowing across the chief
streets, and never up or down, the narrowest and lowest house
can flaunt a large ensign without fear of its ever flapping
against the walls of its proud neighbours.

It is not only in rosy cheeks that the Californian English
have the old-world type. With less ingenuity than the New
England Yankees, they have far more depth and solidity in
their enterprise : they do not rack their brain at inventing
machines to peel apples and milk cows, but they intend to
tunnel through the mountains to Lake Tahoe, tap it, and with
its waters irrigate the Californian plains. They share our
British love for cash payments and good roads ; they one ana
all set their faces against repudiation in any shape, and are
Strongly for what they call " rolling-up " the :'ebt Throughout

178 QKEATEE SHIfATX. fdttAp.

the war, they quoted paper as depreciated, not gold as risen.
Indeed, there is here the same unreasoning prejudice against
paper-money that I met with in Nevada. After all, what can
be expected of a State which still produces three-eighths of all
the gold raised yearly in the world.

San Francisco is inhabited, as all American cities bid fair to.
be, by a mixed throng of men of all lands beneath the sun.
New Englanders and Englishmen predominate in energy,
Chinese in numbers. The French and Italians are stronger
here than in any other city in the States ; and the red-skinned
Mexicans, who own the land, supply the market people and a
small portion of the townsfolk. Australians and Chilians are
numerous; the Germans and Scandinavians alone are few;
they prefer to go where they have already friends — to Phila-
delphia or Milwaukee. In this city — already a microcosm of
the world — the English, British and American, are in possession
— have distanced the Irish, beaten down the Chinese by force,
and are destined to physically preponderate in the cross-breed,
and give the tone, political and moral, to the Pacific shore.
New York is Irish, Philadelphia German ; Milwaukee Norwe-
gian ; Chicago Canadian ; Sault de Ste. Marie French ; but in
San Francisco — where all the foreign races are strong — none
is dominant; whence the singular result that California, the
most mixed in population, is also the most English of the
States.

In this strange community, starting more free from the
Puritan influence of New England than has hitherto done any
State within the Union, it is doubtful what religion will pie-
dominate. Catholicism is " not fashionable " in America — it
is the creed of the Irish, and that is enough for most Americans ;
so Anglicanism, its critics say, is popular as being "very
proper." Whatever the cause, the Episcopalian Church is
flourishing in California, and it seems probable that the Church
which gains the day in California will eventually be that of the
whole Pacific.

On Montgomery Street are some of the finest buildings in
all America ; the " Masonic Hall," the " Union Club," and
others. The club has only just been rebuilt after its destruction
t>y a nitro-glycerine explosion which occurred in the express

CHAf. xxn.] GOLDEX CITY. 179

office next door. A case, of which no one knew the contents,
was being lifted by two clerks, when it exploded, blowing
down a portion of the club, and breaking half the windows in
the city. On examination it was found to be nitre-glycerine
on its way to the mines.

Another accident occurred here yesterday with this same
compound. A sharp report was heard on board a ship lying
in the docks, and the cook was found dead, below ; pieces of a
flask had been driven into his heart and lungs. The deposit on
the broken glass was examined, and found to be common oil ;
but this morning, I read in the Alia a report from a chemist
that traces of nitro-glycerine have been discovered by him
upon the glass, and a statement from one of the hands says
that the ship on her way up had called at Manzanilla, where
the cook had taken the flask from a merchant's office, emptied
it of its' contents, the character of which was unknown to him,
and filled it with common oil.

Since the great explosion at Aspinwall, nitro-glycerine has
been the nightmare of Californians. For earthquakes they
care little, but the freaks of the devilish oil, which is brought
here secretly, for use in the Nevada mines, have made them
ready to swear that it is itself a demon. They tell you that it
freezes every night, and then the slightest friction will explode
it — that, on the other hand, it goes off if heated. If you leave
it standing in ordinary temperatures, the odds are that it under-
goes decomposition, and then, if you touch it, it explodes ;
and no lapse of time has on its power the smallest deteriorating
effect, but, on the contrary, the oil will crystallize, and then its
strength for harm is multiplied by ten. If San Francisco is
ever destroyed by earthquake, old Californians will certainly
be found to ascribe the shock to nitro-glycerine.

A day or two after my return from Benicia, I escaped from
•.the city, and again went South, halting at San Jose", "The
Garden City," and chief town of the fertile Guadalupe district,
on my way to the quicksilver mines of New Almaden, now the
greatest in the world since they have beaten the Spanish mines
and Idria. From San Jose, I drove myself to Almaden along
a sun-dried valley with a fertile tawny soil, reaching the deli-
cious mountain stream and the groves it feeds in time to join

N 2

r8o GREATER BRITAIN. [CnAP.

my friends at lunch in the shady hacienda. The director tooK
me through the refining works, in which the quicksilver may be
seen running in streams down gutters from the furnaces, but he
was unable to go with me up the mountain to the mines from
which the cinnabar comes shooting by its weight. The super-
intendent engineer — a meerschaum-equipped Bavarian — and
myself mounted, at the Hacienda Gate, upon our savage-looking
beasts, and I found myself for the first time lost in the depths
of a Mexican saddle, and my feet plunged into the boot-stirrups
that I had seen used by the Utes in Denver. The riding feats
of the Mexican and Californian boys are explained when you
find that their saddle puts it out of the question that they
should be thrown ; but the fatigue that its size and shape cause
to man and horse, when the man is a stranger to New Spain,
and the horse knows that he is so, outweighs any possible
advantages that it may possess. With their huge gilt spurs,
attached to the stirrup, not to the boot, the double peak, and
the embroidered trappings, the Mexican saddles are the perfec-
tion at once of the cumbersome and the picturesque.

Silently we half scrambled, half rode, up a breakneck path
which forms a short cut to the mine, till all at once a charge of
our horses at an almost perpendicular wall of rock was followed
by their simultaneously commencing to kick and back towards
the cliff. Springing off, we found that the girths had been
slackened by the Mexican groom, and that the steep bit of
mountain had caused the saddles to slip. This broke the ice,
and we speedily found ourselves discussing miners and mining
in French, my German not being much worse than the
Bavarian's English.

After viewing the mines, the walls of which, composed of
crimson cinnabar, show bravely in the torchglare, I bade good-
bye to what I could see of my German in the fog from his
meerschaum, and turned to ride down by the road instead of
the path. I had not gone a furlong, when, turning a corner,
there burst upon me a view of the whole valley of tawny
California, now richly golden in the colours of the fall. Looking
from this spur of the Santa Cruz Mountains, with the Conua
Costa Range before me, and Mount Hamilton towenng from
the plain, apart, I could discern below me the gleam ot the

CHAP, xzn.] GOLDEN CUT. i«i

Coyote Creek, and of the windows in the church of Santa
Clara — in the distance, the mountains and waters of San
Francisco Bay, from San Mateo to Alameda and San Pablo,
basking in unhindered sun. The wild-oats dried by the heat
made of the plain a field of gold, dotted here and there with
groups of black oak and bay, and darkened at the mountain
foot with " chapparal." The volcanic hills were rounded into
softness in the delicious haze, and all nature overspread with a
poetic calm. As I lost the view, the mighty fog was beginning
to pour in through the Golden Gate to refresh America with
dews from the Pacific.

GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. JUUU.

CHAPTER XXIIL

LITTLE CHINA.

"THE Indians begin to be troublesome again in Trinity County.
One man and a Chinaman have been killed, and a lady crippled
for life."

That the antipathy everywhere exhibited by the English to
coloured races was not less strong in California than in the
Carolinas I had suspected, but I was hardly prepared for the
deliberate distinction between men and yellow men drawn in
this paragraph from the California Alta of the day of my
return to San Francisco.

A determination to explore Little China, as the celestial
quarter of the city is termed, already arrived at, was only
strengthened by the unconscious humour of the Alta, and I at
once set off in search of two of the detectives, Edes and Sauls-
bury, to whom I had some sort of introduction, and put myself
under their charge for the night.

We had not been half-an-hour in the Chinese theatre or
opera-house before my detectives must have repented of their
offer to " show me around," for, incomprehensible as it seemed
to them with their New England gravity and American con-
tempt for the Chinese, I was amused beyond measure with the
performance, and fairly lost myself in the longest laugh that I
had enjoyed since I had left the plantations of Virginia.

When we entered the house, which is the size of the Strand
Theatre of London, it may have been ten or eleven o'clock.
The performance had begun at seven, and was likely to last
till two A.M. By the " performance " was meant this particular
act or scene, for the piece had been going on every evening for
a month, and would be still in progress during the best part of

CHAP, xxiii.] LITTLE CHINA, i8j

another, it being the principle of the Chinese drama to take up
the hero at an early age, and conduct him to the grave — which
he reaches full of years and of honour.

• The house was crammed with a grinning crowd of happy
" yellow-boys," while the " China ladies " had a long gallery to
themselves. No sound of applause is to be heard in a Chinese
place of amusement, but the crowd grin delight at the actors,
who, for their part, grin back at the crowd.

The feature of the performance which struck me at once
was the hearty interest the actors took in the play, and the
chaff that went on between them and the pit ; it is not only
from their numbers and the nature of their trades that the
Chinese may be called the Irish of the Pacific : there was soul
in every gesture.

On the stage, behind the actors, was a band, which played
unceasingly, and so loud, that the performers, who clearly had not
the smallest intention of subordinating their parts to the music,
had to talk in shrieks in order to be heard. The audience, too,
all talked in their loudest natural tones.

As for the play, a lady made love to an old gentleman (pro-
bably the hero, as this was the second month or third act of
the play), and, bawling at him fiercely, was indignantly rejected
by him in a piercing shriek. Relatives, male and female,
coming with many howls to the assistance of the lady, were
ignominiously put to flight, in a high falsetto key, by the old
fellow's footmen, who were in turn routed by a force of yelling
spearmen, apparently the county fosse. The soldiers wore
paint in rings of various colours, put on so deftly, that of nose,
of eyes, of mouth, no trace could be discovered; the front face
resembled a target for archery. All this time, a steady unceas-
ing uproar was continued by four gongs and a harp, with various
cymbals, pavilions, triangles, and guitars.

Scenery there was none, but boards were put up in the
Elizabethan way, with hieroglyphics denoting • the supposed
locality} and another archaic point is, that all the female parts
•were played by boys. For this I have the word of the detec-
tives ; my eyes, had I not long since ceased to believe them,
would have given me proof to the contrary.

The acting, so far as I could judge by the grimace, was ex-

184 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP.

cellent. Nowhere could be found greater spirit, or equal power
of facial expression. The stage fight was full of pantomimic
force ; the leading soldier would make his fortune as a London
pantaloon.

When the detectives could no longer contain their distaste
for the performance, we changed our quarters for a restaurant —
the " Hang Heong," the wood of which was brought from
China.

The street along which we had to pass was decorated rather
than lit by paper lanterns hung over every door; but the
" Hang Heong " was brilliantly illuminated, with a view, no
doubt, to attracting the crowd as they poured out from the
theatre at a later hour. The ground-floor was occupied by shop
and kitchen, the dining-rooms being upstairs. The counter,
which is on the plan of that in the houses of the Palais Royal,
was presided over, not by a smiling woman, but by grave and
pig-tailed gentlemen in black, who received our order from the
detective with the decorous solemnity of the head waiter in an
English country inn.

The rooms upstairs were nearly full ; and as the Chinese by
no means follow the Americans in silent eating, the Babel was
tremendous. A saucer and a pair of chopsticks were given
each of us, but at our request a spoon was furnished as a special
favour to the " Melicans."

Tiny cups of a sweet spirit were handed us before supper
was brought up. The liquor was a kind of shrub, but white ;
made, I was told, from sugar-canes. For first course, we had
roast duck cut in pieces, and served in an oil-filled bowl, and
some sort of fish ; tea was then brought in, and followed by
shark's fin, for which I had given a special order ; the result
might have been gum-arabic for any flavour I could find. Dog
was not to be obtained, and birds'-nest soup was beyond the
purse of a traveller seven thousand miles from home, and twelve
thousand from hrs next supplies. A dish of some strange black
fungus stewed in rice, followed by preserves and cakes, con-
cluded our supper, and these were washed down by our third
cups of tea.

After paying our respects and our money to the gentleman in
black, who grunted a lugubrious something that answered to

CHAP. ITIH.] LITTLE CHINA. 185

" good-night," we paid a visit to the Chinese " bad quarte:,'j
which differs only in degree of badness from the "quartier
Mexicain," the bad pre-eminence being ascribed, even by the
prejudiced detectives, to the Spaniards and Chilenos.

Hurrying on, we reached the Chinese gaming-houses, just
before they closed. Some difficulty was made about admitting
us by the " yellow loafers " who hung round the gate, as the
houses are prohibited by law ; but as soon as the detectives,
who were known, explained that they came not on business but
on pleasure, we were suffered to pass in among the silent
melancholy gamblers. Not a word was heard, beyond every
now and then a grunt from the croupier. Each man knew
what he was about, and won or lost his money in the stillness
of a dead-house. The game appeared to be a sort of loto ; but
a few minutes of it was enough, and the detectives pretended
to no deep acquaintance with its principles.

The San Francisco Chinese are not all mere theatre-goers,
loafers, gamblers ; as a body, they are frugal, industrious, con-
tented men. I soon grew to think it a pleasure to meet a
Chinese-American, so clean and happy is his look ; not a speck
is to be seen upon the blue cloth of his long coat or baggy
trousers. His hair is combed with care ; the bamboo on which
he and his mate together carry their enormous load seems as
though cleansed a dozen times a day.

It is said to be a peculiarity of the Chinese that they are all
alike : no European can, without he has dealings with them,
distinguish one celestial from another. The same, however,
may be said of the Sikhs, the Australian natives — of most
coloured races, in short. The points of difference which dis-
tinguish the yellow men, the red men, the black men with
straight hair, the negroes, from any other race whatever, are so
much more prominent than the minor distinctions between Ah
Sing and Chi Long, or between Uncle Ned and Uncle Tom,
that the individual are sunk and lost in the national distinctions.
To the Chinese in turn all Europeans are alike ; but beneath
these obvious facts, there lies a grain of solid truth that is worth
the hunting out, and which is connected with the change-of-type
question in America and Australasia. Men of similar habits of
Wind and body are alike among ourselves in Europe ; not^vl

186 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xxra.

instances are the close resemblance of Pere Enfantin, the St
Simonian chief, to the busts of Epicurus ; of Bismarck to
Cardinal Ximenes. Irish labourers — men who for the most
part work hard, feed little, and leave their minds entirely un-
ploughed — are all alike ; Chinamen, who all work hard, and
work alike, who live alike, and who go further, and all think
alike, are, by a mere law of nature, indistinguishable one from
the other.

In the course of my wanderings in the Golden City, I lighted
on the house of the Canton Company, one of the Chinese
benevolent societies, the others being those of Hong Kong,
Macao, and Amoy. They are like the New York Immigration
Commission, and the London "Societe Franchise de Bienfai-
sance" combined ; added to a theatre and joss-house, or temple,
and governed on the principles of such clubs as those of the
" whites " or " greens" at Heidelberg, they are, in short, Chinese
trades unions, sheltering the sick, succouring the distressed,
finding work for the unemployed, receiving the immigrants from
China when they land, and shipping their bones back to China,
ticketed with name and address, when they die. " Hong Kong,
with dead Chinamen," is said to be a common answer from
outward-bounders to a hail from the guard-ship at the Golden
Gate.

Some of the Chinese are wealthy : Tung Yu & Co., Chi Sing
Tong & Co., Wing Wo Lang & Co., Chy Lung & Co., stand
high among the merchants of the Golden City. Honest and
wealthy as these men are allowed to be, they are despised by
every white Californian, from the Governor of the State to the
Mexican boy who cleans his shoes.

In America, as in Australia, there is a violent prejudice
against John Chinaman. He pilfers, we are told ; he lies, he
is dirty, he smokes opium, is full of bestial vices — -a pagan, and
— what is far more important — yellow ! All his sins are to be
pardoned but the last. Californians, when in good humour,
will admit that John is sober, patient, peaceable, and hard-
working, that his clothes at least are scrupulously clean ; but he
is yellow ! Even the Mexicans, themselves despised, look down
upon the Chinamen, just as the New York Irish affect to have
no dealings with "the naygurs." Th§ Chinese themselves

CHAI-. xxin.] LITTLE CHINA. 187

pander to the feeling. Their famous appeal to the Californian
Democrats may or may not be true ; " What for Democlat allee
timee talkee dam Chinaman? Chinaman allee samee Demo-
clat; no likee nigger, no likee injun." "Infernals," "Celes-
tials," and "Greasers" — or black men, yellow men, and
Mexicans — it is hard to say which are most despised by the
American whites in California.

The Chinaman is hated by the rough fellows for his cowardice.
Had the Chinese stood to their rights against the Americans,
they would long since have been driven from California, As it
is, here and in Victoria they invariably give way, and never
work at diggings which are occupied by whites. Yet in both
countries they take out mining licences from the State, which is
bound to protect them in the possession of the rights thus
gained, but which is powerless against the rioters of Ballarat, or
the "Anti-Chinese mob" of El Dorado.

The Chinese in California are practically confined by public
opinion, violence, or threats, to inferior kinds of work, which
the " meanest " of the whites of the Pacific States refuse to
perform. Politically, this is slavery. All the evils to which
slavery has given rise in the cotton States are here produced by
violence, in a less degree only because the Chinese are fewer
than were the negroes.

In spite of a prejudice which recalls the time when the British
Government forbade the American colonist to employ negroes
in the manufacture of hats, on the ground that white labourers
could not stand the competition, the yellow men continue to
flock to " Gold Hills," as they call San Francisco. Already
they are the washermen, sweepers, and porters of three States,
two territories, and British Columbia. They are denied civil
rights ; their word is not taken in cases where white men are
concerned ; a heavy tax is set upon them on their entry to the
State ; a second tax when they commence to mine — still their
numbers steadily increase. In 1852, Governor Bigler, in his
message, recommended the prohibition of the immigration of
the Chinese, but they now number one-tenth of the population.

The Irish of Asia, the Chinese, have commenced to flow ove-
on to the outer world. Who shall say where the flow will
slop ? Ireland, with now five millions of people, has in twenty

188 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xxin.

years poured an equal number out into the world What is to
prevent the next fifty years seeing an emigration of a couple of
hundreds of millions from the rebellion-torn provinces of
Cathay ?

Three Chinamen in a temperate climate will do as much arm-
•tfork as two Englishmen, and will eat or cost less. It looks as
though the cheaper would starve out the dearer race, as rabbits
drive out stronger but hungrier hares. This tendency is already
plainly visible in our mercantile marine : the ships are manned
with motley crews of Bombay lascars, Maories, Negroes, Arabs,
Chinamen, Kroomen, and Malays. There are no British or
American seamen now, except boys who are to be quartermas-
ters some day, and experienced hands who are qnartermasters
already. But there is nothing to regret in this : Anglo-Saxons
are too valuable to be used as ordinary seamen where lascars
will do nearly, and Maories quite as well. Nature seems to
intend the English for a race of officers, to direct and guide the
cheap labour of the Eastern peoples.

The serious side of the Chinese problem — just touched on
here — will force itself rudely upon our notice in Australia.

CHAPTER XXIV.

CALIFORNIA.

" IN front of San Francisco are 745 millions of hungry Asiaticsf
who have spices to exchange for meat and grain."

The words are Governor Gilpin's, made use of by him in
discussing the future of overland trade, and worthy of notice as
showing why it is that, in making forecasts of the future of
California, we have to look more to her facilities for trade than
to her natural productions. San Francisco aims at being, not
so much the port of California as one of the main stations on
the Anglo-Saxon highway round the globe.

Although the chief claim of California to consideration is her
position on the Pacific, her fertility and size alone entitle her
to notice. This single State is 750 miles in length — would
stretch from Chamouni to the southernmost point of Malta.
There are two capes in California — one nearly in the latitude
of Jerusalem, the other nearly in the latitude of Rome. The
State has twice the area of Great Britain ; the single valley of the
Joaquin and Sacramento, from Tulare Lake to the great snow-
peak of Shasta, is as large as the three kingdoms. Every useful
mineral, every kind of fertile soil, every variety of helpful climate
are to be found within the State. There are in the Union forty-
five such states or territories, with an average area equal to that
:>f Britain.

Three great tracts, each with its soil and character, lie be-
tween the Pacific and the snows of the Sierra. On the slopes
are the forests of giant timber, the sheltered valleys, and the
gold-fields in which I spent my first week in California. Next
comes the great hot plain of Sacramento, where, with irrigation,
all the best fruits of the tropics grow luxuriantly, where water

»90 QREAfER

is plentiful, and the Pacific breeze will raise it to the surface.
Round the valley are vast tracts for sheep and wheat, and on
the Contra Costas are millions of acres of wild oats growing
on the best of lands for cattle, while the slopes are covered with
young vines. Between the Contra Costa Range and the sea
is a winterless strip possessing for table vegetables and flowers
the finest soil and climate in the world. The story goes that
Californian boys, when asked if they believe in a future state,
reply : " Guess so ; California." .

Whether San Francisco will grow to be a second Liverpool
or New York is an all-absorbing question to those who live on
the Pacific shores, and one not without an interest and a moral
for ourselves. New York has waxed rich and huge mainly
because she is so placed as to command one of the best har-
bours on the coast of a country which exports enormously of
bread-stuffs. Liverpool has thrived as one of the shipping ports
for the manufactures of the northern coal counties of England.
San Francisco Bay, as the best harbour south of Puget Sound,
is, and will remain, the centre of the export trade of the Pacific
States in wool and cereals. If coal is found in plenty in the
Golden State, population will increase, manufactures spring up,
and the export of wrought articles take the place of that oi
raw produce. If coal is found in the Contra Costa Range, San
Francisco will continue, in spite of earthquakes, to be the fore-
most port on the Pacific side ; if, as is more probable, the find
of coal is confined to the Monte Diablo district, and is of trifling
value, still the future of San Francisco as the meeting point of
the railways, and centre of the import of manufactured goods,
and of the export of the produce of an agricultural and pastoral
interior, is as certain as it must inevitably be brilliant. Whether
the chief town of the Pacific States will in time develop into
one of the commercial capitals of the world is a wider and a
harder question. That it will be the converging point of the
Pacific railroads both of Chicago and St. Louis there can be no
doubt. That all the new overland trade from China and Japan
will pass through it seems as clear ; it is the extent of this trade
that is in question. For the moment, land transit cannot com-
pete on equal terms with water carriage ; but assuming that, in
the long run, this will cease to be the case, it will be the over-

. xxiv.") CALtFOHlftA. tgi

land route across Russia, and not that through the United
States, that will convey the silks and teas of China to Central
and Western Europe. The very arguments of which the Califor-
nian merchants make use to show that the delicate goods of China
need land transport go to prove that shipping and unshipping
in the Pacific, and a repetition in the Atlantic of each process,
cannot be good for them. The political importance to America
of the Pacific railroads does not admit of over-statement;
but the Russian or English Pacific routes must, commercially
speaking, win the day. For rare and costly Eastern goods, the
English Railway through Southern China, Upper India, the
Persian coast, and the Euphrates is no longer now a dream.
If Russian bureaucracy takes too long to move, trade will be
diverted by the Gulf route ; coarser goods and food will long
continue to come by sea, but in no case can the city of San
Francisco become a western outport of Europe.

The lustre of the future of San Francisco is not dimmed by
considerations such as these ; as the port of entry for the trade
of America with all the East, its wealth must become enormous ;
and if, as is probable, Japan, New Zealand, and New South
Wales grow to be manufacturing communities, San Francisco
must needs in time take rank as a second, if not a greatei,
London. This, however, is the more distant future. With
cheaper labour than the Pacific States and the British colonies
possess, with a more settled government than Japan — Penn-
sylvania and Ohio will take, and for years will keep, the China
trade. As for the colonies, the voyage from San Francisco to
Australia is almost as long and difficult as that from England,
and there is every probability that Lancashire and Belgium
will continue to supply the colonists with clothes and tools,
until they themselves, possessed as they are of coal, become
competent to make them. The merchants of San Francisco
will be limited in the main to the trade with China and Japan.
In this direction the future has no bounds : through California"
and the Sandwich Islands, through Japan, fast becoming
American, and China, the coast of which is already British,
our race seems marching westward to universal rule. The
Russian empire itself, with all its passive strength, cannot
Stand against the English horde, ever pushing with burning

energy towards the setting sun. Russia and England are said
to be nearing each other upon the Indus ; but long before
they can meet there, they will be face to face upon the Amoor.

For a time, the flood may be diverted south or north : Mexico
will doubtless, and British Columbia will probably, carry off a
portion of the thousands who are pouring west from the bleak
rocks of New England. The Californian expedition of 1853
against Sonora and Lower California will be repeated with
success, but the tide will be but momentarily stayed. So
entirely are English countries now the mother-lands of energy
and adventure throughout the world, that no one who has
watched what has happened in California, in British Columbia,
and on the west coast of New Zealand, can doubt that the
discovery of placer gold-fields in any sea-girt country in the
world, must now be followed by the speedy rise there of an
English government. We know enough of Chili, and of the
new Russian country on the Amoor, to be aware that such dis-
coveries are more than likely to occur.

In the face of facts like these, men are to be found who ask
whether a break-up of the Union is not still probable — whether
the Pacific States are not likely to secede from the Atlantic ;
some even contend for the general principle that "America
must go to pieces — she is too big." It is small powers, not
great ones, that have become impossible : the unification of
Germany is in this respect but the dawn of a new era. The
great countries of to-day are smaller than were the smallest of a
hundred years ago. Lewes was farther from London in 1700
than Edinburgh is now. New York and San Francisco will in
1870 be nearer to each other than Canton and Pekin. From
the point of view of mere size, there is more likelihood of
England entering the Union than of California seceding
from it.

The material interests of the Pacific States will always lie in
union. The West, sympathising in the main with the Southern-
ers upon the slavery question, threw herself into the war, and
crushed them, because she saw the necessity of keeping her
outlets under her own control. The same policy would hold
good for the Pacific States in the case of the continental rail-
road, America, of all countries, alone shares th$ future of both

CHAP, xxiv.] CALIFORNIA. 193

Atlantic and Pacific, and she knows her interests too well to
allow such an advantage to be thrown away. Uncalculating
rebellion of the Pacific States upon some sudden heat, is the
only danger to be apprehended, and such a rising could be put
down with ease, owing to the manner in which these States are
commanded from the sea. Throughout the late rebellion, the
Federal navy, though officered almost entirely by Southerners,
was loyal to the flag, and it would be so again. In these days,
loyalty may be said to be peculiarly the sailor's passion :
perhaps he loves his country because he sees so little of it.

« • * * *

California is too British to be typically American : it would
seem that nowhere in the United States have we found the true
America or the real American. Except as abstractions, they do
not exist ; it is only by looking carefully at each eccentric and
irregular America — at Irish New York, at Puritan New England,
at the rowdy South, at the rough and swaggering Far West, at
the cosmopolitan Pacific States — that we come to reject the
anomalous features, and to find America in the points they
possess in common. It is when the country is left that there
rises in the mind an image that soars above all local prejudice —
that of the America of the law-abiding, mighty people who arc
imposing English institutions on the world.

194 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. ixv.

CHAPTER XXV.

MEXICO.

IN company with a throng of men of all races, all tongues, and
all trades, such as a Californian steamer can alone collect, I came
coasting southwards under the cliffs of Lower California. Of
the thousand passengers who sought refuge from the stifling
heat upon the upper and hurricane decks, more than half were
diggers returning with a " pile " to their homes in the Atlantic
States. While we hung over the bulwarks watching the bonitos
and the whales, the shaggy-bearded diggers threw " bolas " at
the boobies that flew out to us from the blazing rocks, and
brought them down screaming upon the decks. Threading our
way through the reefs off the lovely Island of Margarita, where
the " Independence '' was lost with three hundred human beings,
we lay-to at Cape St. Lucas, and landed his Excellency Don
Antonio Pedrin, Mexican Governor of Lower California, and a
Juarez man, in the very bay where Cavendish lay in wait for
months for the "great Manilla ship" — the Acapulco galleon.

When Girolamo Benzoni visited the Mexican Pacific coast,
he confused the turtle with the " crocodile," describing the
former under the latter's name ; but at Manzanilla, the two
may be seen lying almost side by side upon the sands. Sepa-
rated from the blue waters of the harbour by a narrow strand
there is a festering lagoon, the banks of which swarm with
the smaller alligators ; but a few yards off, upon the other
slope, the townsfolk and the turtles they had brought down for
sale to our ship's purser were lying, when I saw them, in a con-
fused heap under an awning of sail-cloth nailed up to the palm-
trees. Alligator, turtle, Mexican, it was hard to say which
was the superior being. A French corvette was in possession

CHAP, xxv.] MEXICO. 195

of the port — one of the last of the holding-places through
which the remnants of the army of occupation were dribbling
back to France.

In the land-locked bay of Acapulco, one of the dozen " hot-
test places in the world," we found two French frigates, whose
officers boarded us at once. They told us that they landed
their marines every morning after breakfast, and re- embarked
them before sunset ; they could get nothing from the shore but
water ; the Mexicans, under Alvarez, occupied the town at
night, and carried off even the fruit. I asked about supplies,
and the answer was sweeping : " Ah, mon Dieu, monsieur, cette
sscurrrfaee canaille de Alvarez nous vole tout Nous n'avons
que de 1'eau fraiche, et Alvarez va nous emporter la fontaine
aussi quelque nuit. Ce sont des voleurs, voyez-vous, ces Me'chi-
canos." When they granted us leave to land, it was with the
proviso that we should not blame them if we were shot at by
the Mexicans as we went ashore, and by themselves as we came
off again. Firing often takes place at night between Alvarez
and the French, but with a total loss in many months of only
two men killed.

The day of my visit to Acapulco was the anniversary of the
issue, one year before, of Marshal Bazaine's famous order of
the day, directing the instant execution, as red-handed rebels,
of Mexican prisoners taken by the French. It is a strange
commentary upon the Marshal's circular that in a year from its
issue the " Latin empire in America" should have had a term
set to it by the President of the United States. In Canada,
in India, in Egypt, in New Zealand, the English have met the
French abroad, and in this Mexican affair history does but
repeat itself. There is nothing more singular to the Londoner
than the contempt of the Americans for France. All Europe
seems small when seen from the United States ; but the opinion
of Great Britain and the strength of Russia are still looked on
with some respect : France alone completely vanishes, and
instead of every one asking, as with us, "What does the
Emperor say ?" no one cares in the least what Napoleon does
or thinks. In a Chicago paper, I have seen a column oS
Washington news headed, " Seward orders Lewis Napoleon to
leave Mexico right away 1 Nap. lies badly to get out of the

o 2

196

GREATER BRITAIN.

[CHAP. xxv.

fix 1" While the Americans are still, in a high degree, suscep-
iibie of affront from England, and would never, if they con-
ceived themselves purposely insulted, stop to weigh the cost of
war, towards France they only feel, as a Californian said to me,
" Is it worth our while to set to work to whip her?" The effect
of Gettysburg and Sadowa will be that, except Great Britain,
Italy, and Spain, no nations will care much for the threats or
praises of Imperial France.

The true character of the struggle in Mexico has not been
pointed out. It was not a mere conflict between the majority
of the people and a minority supported by foreign aid, but an
uprising of the Indians of the country against the whites of the
chief town. The Spaniards of the capital were Maximilian's
supporters, and upon them the Indians and Mestizos have
visited their revenge for the deeds of Cortez and Pizarro. On
the west coast there is to be seen no trace of Spanish blood :
in dress, in language, in religion, the people are Iberian ; in
features, in idleness, and in ferocity, undoubtedly Red-Indian.

In the reports of the Argentine Confederation, it is stated
that the Caucasian blood comes to the front in the mixed race ;
a few hundred Spanish families in La Plata are said to have
absorbed several hundred thousand Indians, without suffering
in their whiteness or other national characteristics. There is
something of the frog that swallowed the ox in this ; and the
theories of the Argentine officials, themselves of the mixed
race, cannot outweigh the evidence of our own eyes in the sea-
port towns of Mexico. There at least it is the Spaniards, not
the Indians, who have disappeared ; and the only mixture of
blood that can be traced is that of Red Indian and negro, in
the fisher-boys about the ports. They are lithe lads, with eyes
full of art and fire.

The Spaniards of Mexico have become Red Indians, as the
Turks of Europe have become Albanians or Circassians. Where
I the conquering marries into the conquered race, it ends by
being absorbed, and the mixed breed gradually becomes pure
I again in the type of the more numerous race. It would seem
that the North American continent will soon be divided between
the Saxon and the Aztec republics.

In California I once met with a caricature in which Uncl<?

CHAT. XSV.J MEXICO^ 19}

Sam or Brother Jonathan is lying on his back Upon Canada
and the United States, with his head in Russian America, and
his feet against a tumble-down fence, behind which is Mexico.
His knees are bent, and his position cramped. He says, "Guess
I shall soon have to stretch my legs, some /" There is not in
the United States any strong feeling in favour of the annexation
of the remainder of the continent, but there is a solemn deter-
mination that no foreign country shall in any way gain fresh
footing or influence upon American soil, and that monarchy
shall not be established in Mexico or Canada. Further than
this, there is a belief that, as the south central portions of the
States become fully peopled up, population will pour over into
the Mexican provinces of Chihuahua and Sonora, and that
the annexation of these and some other portions of Mexico to
the United States cannot long be prevented. For such acqui-
sitions of territory America would pay as she paid in the case
of Texas, which she first conquered, and then bought at a fair
price.

In annexing the whole of Mexico, Protestant Americans
would feel that they were losing more than they could gain. In
California and New Mexico, they have already to deal with a
population of Mexican Catholics, and difficulties have arisen in
the matter of the Church lands. The Catholic vote is powerful
not only in California and New York, but in Maryland, in
Louisiana, in Kansas, and even in Massachusetts. The sons of
the Pilgrim Fathers would scarcely look with pleasure on the
admission to the Union of ten millions of Mexican Catholics,
and, on the other hand, the day dreams of Leonard Calvert
would not be realized in the triumph of such a Catholicism as
theirs any more than in the success of that of the Philadelphia
Academy, or New York Tammany Hall.

With the exception of the Irish, the great majority of
Catholic emigrants avoid the United States, but the migration
of F.uropean Catholics to South America is increasing year by
year. Just as the Germans, the Norwegians, and the Irish flow
towards the States, the French, the Spanish, and the Italians
flock into La Plata, Chili, and Brazil. The European population
of La Plata has already reached three hundred thousand, and
is growing fast The French " mission " in Mexico was the

I98 GREATER BRITAIN. |_CHAr. xx7.

making of that great country a further field for the Latin immi-
gration ; and when the Californians marched to Juarez' help, it
was to save Mexico to North America.

In all history, nothing can be found more dignified than the
action of America upon the Monroe doctrine. Since the prin-
ciple was first laid down in words, in 1823, the national beha-
viour has been courteous, consistent, firm ; and the language
used now that America is all-powerful, is the same that her
statesmen made use of during the rebellion in the hour of her
most instant peril. It will be hard for political philosophers of
the future to assert that a democratic republic can have no
foreign policy.

The Pacific coast of Mexico is wonderfully full of beauties of
a peculiar kind ; the sea is always calm, and of a deep dull blue,
with turtles lying basking on the surface, and flying-fish skim-
ming lightly over its expanse, while the shores supply a fringe
of bright yellow sand at once to the ocean blue and to the rich
green of the cactus groves. On every spit or sand-bar there
grows the feathery palm. A low range of jungle-covered hills
is cut by gullies, through which we get glimpses of lagoons
bluer than the sea itself, and behind them the sharp volcanic
peaks rise through and into cloud. Once in a while, Colima,
or other giant hill, towering above the rest in blue-black gloom,
serves to show that the shores belong to some mightier continent
than Calypso's isle.

199

CHAPTER XXVI.
REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT.

AMONG our Californian passengers, we had many strong party
men, and political conversation never flagged throughout the
voyage. In every discussion it became more and more clear
that the Democratic is the Constitutional, the Republican the
Utilitarian party — rightly called " Radical," from its habit of
going to the root of things, to see whether they are good or
bad. Such, however, is the misfortune of America in the pos-
session of a written Constitution, such the reverence paid to that
document on account of the character of the men who penned it,
that even the extremest Radicals dare not admit in public that
they aim at essential change, and the party loses, in consequence,
a portion of the strength that attaches to outspoken honesty.

The President's* party at their convention — known as the
"Wigwam" — which met while I was in Philadelphia, maintained
that the war had but restored the "Union as it was," with State
rights unimpaired. The Republicans say that they gave their
blood for the " Union as it was not; " for one nation, and not
for thirty-six, or forty-five. The Wigwam declared that the
Washington Government had no constitutional right to deny
Representation in Congress to any State. The Republicans
asked how, if this constitutional provision was to be observed,
the Government of the country was to be carried on. The
Wigwam laid it down as a principle, that Congress has no
power to interfere with the right possessed by each State to
prescribe qualifications for the elective franchise. The Radicals
say that State sovereignty should have vanished when slavery went
down, and ask how the South is to be governed consistently

* President Johnson, of course.

200 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. XXVT.

with republicanism unless by negro suffrage, and how this is
to be maintained except by Federal control over the various
States — by abolition, in short, of the old Union, and creation,
of a new. The more honest among the Republicans admit
that for the position which they have taken up they can find no
warrant in the Constitution ; that, according to the doctrine
which the " continental statesmen " and the authors of " The
Federalist " would lay down, were they living, thirty-five of the
States, even if they were unanimous, could have no right to
tamper with the constitution of the thirty-sixth. The answer
to all this can only be, that were the Constitution to be closely
followed, the result would be the ruin of the land.

The Republican party have been blamed because their theory
and practice alike tend towards a consolidation of power, and
a strengthening of the hands of the Government at Washington.
It is in this that lies their chief claim to support. Local govern-
ment is an excellent thing ; it is the greatest of the inventions
of our inventive race, the chief security for continued freedom
possessed by a people already free. This local government is
consistent with a powerful executive ; between the village
municipality and Congress, between the Cabinet and the district
council of select men, there can be no conflict : it is State
sovereignty, and the pernicious heresy of primary allegiance to
the State, that have already proved as costly to the Republic as
they are dangerous to her future.

It has been said that America, under the Federal system,
unites the freedom of the small State with the power of the
great ; but though this is true, it is brought about, not through
the federation of the States, but through that of the townships
and districts. The latter are the true units to which the con-
sistent Republican owes his secondary allegiance. It is, perhaps,
only in the tiny New England States that Northern men care
much about their commonwealth ; a citizen of Pennsylvania or
New York never talks of his State, unless to criticise its legisla-
ture. After all, where intelligence and education are universal,
where a spirit of freedom has struck its roots into the national
heart of a great race, there can be no danger in centralisation,
for the power that you strengthen is that of the whole people,
aid a nation can have nothing to fear from itself.

CHAP, xxvi.] REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT. joi

In watching the measures of the Radicals, we must remember
that they have still to guard their country against great dangers
The war did not last long enough to destroy anti-republicanism
along with slavery. The social system of the Carolinas was
upset ; but the political fabric built upon a slavery foundation
in such " free " States as New York and Maryland is scarcely
shaken.

If we look to the record of the Republican party with a view
to making a forecast of its future conduct, we find that at the
end of the war the party had before it the choice betweei
military rule and negro rule for the South — between a govern
ment carried on through generals and provost-marshals, unknown
to the Constitution and to the courts, and destined to prolong
for ages the disruption of the Union and disquiet of the nation,
and, on the other hand, a rule founded upon the principles of
equity and self-government, dear to our race, and supported by
local majorities, not by foreign bayonets. Although possessed
of the whole military power of the nation, the Republicans
refused to endanger their country, and established a system
intended to lead by gradual steps to equal suffrage in the South.
The immediate interest of the party, as distinguished from that
of the country at large, was the other way. The Republican
majority of the presidential elections of 1860 and 1864, had
been increased by the success of the Federal arms, borne mainly
by the Republicans of New England and the West, in a war
conducted to a triumphant issue under the leadership of Repub-
lican Congress-men and generals. The apparent magnanimity
of the admission of a portion of the rebels, warm-handed, to the
poll, would still further have strengthened the Republicans in
the Western and Border States ; and while the extreme wing
would not have dared to desert the party, the moderate men
would have been conciliated by the refusal of the franchise to
the blacks. A foresight of the future of the nation happily pre-
vailed over a more taking policy, and, to the honour of the
Republican leaders, equal franchise was the result.

The one great issue between the Radicals and the Democrats
at the conclusion of the war was this : the "Democracy "denied
that the re-admission to Congress of the representatives of the
Southern States was a matter of expediency at all; to them they

Z02 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xxvr.

declared that it was a matter of right. Either the Union was oi
was not dissolved ; the Radicals admitted that it was not, that
all their endeavours were to prevent the Union being destroyed
by rebels, and that they succeeded in so doing. The States, as
States, were never in rebellion; there was only a powerful
rebellion localised in certain States. " If you admit, then," said
the Democrats, " that the Union is not dissolved, how can you
govern a number of States by major-generals ? " Meanwhile
the Radicals went on, not wasting their time in words, but
passing through the House and over the President's veto the
legislation necessary for the reconstruction of free government —
with their illogical, but thoroughly English good sense, avoiding
all talk about constitutions that are obsolete, and laws that it
was impossible to enforce, and pressing on steadily to the end
that they have in view : equal rights for all men, free govern-
ment as soon as may be. The one thing to regret is, that the
Republicans have not the courage to appeal to the national
exigencies merely, but that their leaders are forced by public
opinion to keep up the sham of constitutionalism. No one in
America seems to dream that there can be anything to alter in
the " matchless Constitution," which was framed by a body of
slave-owners filled with the narrowest aristocratic prejudices, for
a country which has since abolished slavery, and become as
democratic as any nation in the world.

The system of presidential election and the constitution of
the Senate are matters to which the Republicans will turn their
attention as soon as the country is rested from the war. It is
not impossible that a lifetime may see the abolition of the
Presidency proposed, and carried by the vote of the whole
nation. If this be not done, the election will come to be made
directly by the people, without the intervention of the electoral
college. The Senate, as now constituted, rests upon the States,
and that State-rights are doomed no one can doubt who re
members that of the population of New York State less than
half are native-born New Yorkers. What concern can the
cosmopolitan moiety of her people have with the State-rights of
New York ? When a system becomes purely artificial, it is on
the road to death ; . when State-rights represented the various
sovereign powers which the old States had allowed to sleep

CHAP. xxvi.] REPUBLICAN OB DEMOCRAT. 203

while they entered a federal union, State-rights were historical ;
but now that Congress by a single vote cuts and carves territories
as large as all the old States put together, and founds new
commonwealths in the wilderness, the doctrine is worn out.

It is not likely that the Republicans will carry all before them
without a check; but though one Conservative reaction may
follow another, although time after time the Democrats may
return victorious from the Fall elections, in the end Radicalism
must inevitably win the day. A party which takes for its
watchword, " The national good," will always beat the Consti-
tutionalists. *

Except during some great crisis, the questions which come
most home at election times in a democratic country are minor
points, in which the party not in power has always the advan-
tage over the office-holders : it is on these petty matters that a
cry of jobbery and corruption can be got up, and nothing in
American politics is more taking than such a cry. " We are a
liberal people, sir," said a Californian to me, " but we don't
care to see some men get more than their share of Uncle Sam's
money. It doesn't go down at election time to say that the
Democrats are spoiling the country ; but it's a mighty strong
plank that you've got if you prove that Hank Andrews has
made a million of dollars by the last Congressional job. We
say, ' Smart boy, Hank Andrews ; ' but we generally vote for
the other man." It is these small questions, or " side issues,"
as they are termed, which cause the position of parties to fluc-
tuate frequently in certain States. The first reaction, against
the now triumphant Radicals will probably be based upon the
indignation excited by the extension of Maine liquor laws
throughout the whole of the States in which the New Englanders
have the mastery.

Prohibitive laws are not supported in America by the argu-
ments with which all of us in Britain are familiar. The New
England Radicals concede that, so far as the effects of the use
of alcohol are strictly personal, there is no ground for the in-

* I let this chapter stand because the state of American politics at the
end of the war possesses a lasting interest, but the Republican party are
thought by many of their former admirers to have departed from their
principles.

304 GlttiATEA

terference of society. They go even further, and say that no
ground for general and indiscriminate interference with the sale
of liquor is to be found in the fact that drink maddens certain
men, and causes them to commit crime. They are willing to
admit that, were the evils confined to individuals, it would be
their own affair; but they attempt to show that the use of
alcohol affects the condition, moral and physical, of the
drinker's offspring, and that this is a matter so bound up with
the general weal, that public interference may be necessary. It
is the belief of a majority of the thinkers of New England that
the taint of alcoholic poison is hereditary ; that the children of
drunkards will furnish more than the ordinary proportion of
great criminals ; that the descendants of habitual tipplers will
be found to lack vital force, and will fall into the ranks of
pauperism and dependence : not only are the results of morbid
appetites, they say, transmitted to the children, but the appetites
themselves descend to the offspring with the blood. If this be
true, the New England Radicals urge, the use of alcohol becomes
a moral wrong, a crime even, of which the law might well take
cognizance.

We are often told that party organization has become so
dictatorial, so despotic in America, that no one not chosen by
the preliminary convention, no one, in short, whose name is not
upon the party ticket, has any chance of election to an office.
To those who reflect upon the matter, it would seem as though
this is but a consequence of the existence of Party, and of
the system of Local Representation : in England itself the
like abuse is not unknown. Where neither party possesses
overwhelming strength, division is failure ; and some knot or
other of pushing men must be permitted to make the selection
of a candidate, to which, when made, the party must adhere,
or suffer a defeat. As to the composition of the nominating
conventions, the grossest mis-statements have been made to
us in England, for we have been gravely assured that a
nation which is admitted to present the greatest mass of
education and intelligence with the smallest intermixture of
ignorance of which the world has knowledge, allows itself to
be dictated to in the matter of the choice of its rulers by
caucuses and conventions composed of the idlest and most

CHAP, xxvi.] REPUBLICAN OB DEMOCRAT, x*

worthless of its population. Bribery, we have been told,
reigns supreme in these assemblies ; the nation's interest is
but a phrase ; individual selfishness the true dictator of each
choice ; the name of party is but a cloak for private ends, and
the wire pullers are equalled in rascality only by their
nominees,

It need hardly be shown that, were these stories true, a
people so full of patriotic sentiment as that which lately fur-
nished a million and a half of volunteers for a national war,
would without doubt be led to see its safety in the destruction
of conventions and their wire-pullers — of party government
itself, if necessary. It cannot be conceived that the American
people would allow its institutions to be stultified and law
itself insulted to secure the temporary triumph of this party or
of that on any mere question of the day.

The secret of the power of caucus and convention is, general
Avant of time on the part of the community. Your honest and
shrewd Western farmer, not having himself the leisure to select
his candidate, is fain to let caucus or convention choose for him.
In practice, however, the evil is far from great : the party
caucus, for its own interest, will, on the whole, select the fittest
candidate available, and, in any case, dares not, except perhaps in
New York city, fix its choice upon a man of known bad character.
Even where Party is most despotic, a serious mistake committed
by one of the nominating conventions will seldom fail to lose
its side so many votes as to secure a triumph for the opponents.

King Caucus is a great monarch, however ; it would be a
mistake to despise him, and conventions are dear to the
American people — at least, it would seem so, to judge from their
number. Since I have been in America, there have been sitting,
besides doubtless a hundred others, the names of which I have
not noticed, the Philadelphia " Copperjohnson Wigwam," or
assembly of the Presidential party (of which the Radicals say
that it is but " the Copperhead organization with a fresh
snout "), a dentists' convention, a phrenological convention, a
pomological congress, a school-teachers' convention, a Fenian
convention, an eight-hour convention, an insurance companies'
convention, and a loyal soldiers' convention. One is tempted
to think of the assemblies of '48 in Paris, and of the carica-

jo6 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xxvi.

tures representing the young bloods of the Paris Jockey Club
being addressed by their President as " Citoyens Vicomtes,"
whereas, when the cafe waiters met in their congress, it was
" Messieurs les Gar^ons-limonadiers."

The pomological convention was an extremely jovial one,
all the horticulturists being whisky-growers themselves, and
having a proper wish to compare their own with their neigh-
bours "Bourbon" or "old Rye." Caucuses (orcauci: which
is it?) of this kind suggest a derivation of this name for what
many consider a low American proceeding, from an equally
low Latin word of similar sound and spelling. In spite of the
phrase " a dry caucus " being not unknown in the temperance
State of Maine, many might be inclined to think that caucuses,
if not exactly vessels of grace, were decidedly " drinking
vessels ; " but Americans tell you that the word is derived from
the phrase a " caulker's meeting," caulkers being peculiarly given
to noise.

The cry against conventions is only a branch of that
against " politicians," which is continually being raised by the
adherents of the side which happens at the moment to be
the weaker, and which evidently helps to create the evils
against which its authors are protesting. It is now the New
York Democrats who tell such stories as that of the Columbia
District census-taker going to the Washington house of a
wealthy Boston man to find out his religious tenets. The
door was opened by a black boy, to whom the white man
began : " What's your name ?" " Sambo, sah, am my Chris-
tian name." " Wall, Sambo, is your master a Christian ? "
To which Sambo's indignant answer was : " No, sah ! Mass
member ob Congress, sah !" When the democrats were in
power, it was the Republicans of Boston and the Cambridge
professors who threw out sly hints, and violent invectives too,
against the whole tribe of "politicians." Such unreasoning
outcries are to be met only by bare facts ; but were a jury
of readers of the debates in Parliament and in Congress to be
empanelled to decide whether political immorality were not
more rife in England than in America, I should, for my part,
look forward with anxiety to the result

The organization of the Republican party is hugely powerful ;;

CHAP, xxvi.] REPUBLICAN OB DEMOCRAT. 707

it has its branches in every township and district in the
Union; but it is strong, not in the wiles of crafty plotters,
not in the devices of unknown politicians, but in the hearts
of the loyal people of the country. If there were nothing else
to be said to Englishmen on the state of parties in America,
it should be sufficient to point out that, while the " Democracy "
claim the Mozart faction of New York and the shoddy aris-
tocracy, the pious New Englanders and their sons in the
North-West are, by a vast majority, Republicans; and no
" side issues " should be allowed to disguise the fact that the
Democratic is the party of New York, the Republican the
party of America.*

* See the note on page aoj.

GREATER BR11A.TN. [CHAI\ xsvu.

CHAPTER XXVII. .

BROTHERS.

I HAD landed in America at the moment of what is known
in Canada as " the great scare " — that is, the Fenian invasion
at Fort Erie. Before going South, I had attended at New
York a Fenian meeting held to protest against the conduct
of the President and Mr. Seward, who, it was asserted, after
deluding the Irish with promises of aid, had abandoned them,
and even seized their supplies and arms. The chief speaker
of the evening was Mr. Gibbons, of Philadelphia, "Vice-
President of the Irish Republic," a grave and venerable man ;
no rogue or schemer, but an enthusiast as evidently convinced
of the justice as of the certainty of the ultimate triumph of
the cause.

At Chicago, I went to the monster meeting at which Speaker
Colfax addressed the Brotherhood ; at Buffalo, I was present at
the " armed picnic " which gave the Canadian Government so
much trouble. On Lake Michigan, I went on board a Fenian
ship; in New York, I had a conversation with an ex-rebel
officer, a long-haired Georgian, who was wearing the Fenian
uniform of green-and-gold in the public streets. The conclu-
sion to which I came was, that the Brotherhood has the support
of ninety-nine hundredths of the Irish in the States. As we
are dealing not with British, but with English 'politics and life,
this is rather a fact to be borne in mind than a text upon
which to found a homily ; still, the nature of the Irish antipathy
to Britain is worth a moment's consideration ; and the probable
effect of it upon the future of the race is a matter of the gravest
import.

The Fenians, according to a Chicago member of the
Roberts' wing, seek to return to the ancieat state of Ireland,

CHAP, xfcvtt.] SEOTHEES. 209

of which we find the history in the Brehon laws — a
nistic tenure of land (resembling, no doubt, that of the Don Cos-
sacks), and a republic or elective kingship. Such are their
objects ; nothing else will in the least conciliate the Irish in
America. No abolition of the Establishment,*no reform of
land-laws, no Parliament on College Green, nothing that
England can grant while preserving the shadow of union, can
dissolve the Fenian league.

All this is true, and yet there is another great Irish nation to
which, if you turn, you find that conciliation may still avail us.
The Irish in Ireland are not Fenians in the American sense :
they hate us, perhaps, but they may be mollified ; they are dis-
contented, but they may be satisfied ; customs and principles of
law, the natural growth of the Irish mind and the Irish soil,
can be recognised and made the basis of legislation without
bringing about the disruption of the empire.

The first Irish question that we shall have to set ourselves to
understand is that of land. Permanent tenure is as natural to
the Irish, as freeholding to the English people. All that is
needed of our statesmen is, that they recognise in legislation
that which they cannot but admit in private talk — namely, that
there may be essential differences between race and race.

The results of legislation which proceeds upon this basis may
follow very slowly upon the change of system, for there is at
present no nucleus whatever for the feeling of amity which we
would create. Even the alliance of the Irish politicians with
the English Radicals is merely temporary ; the Irish antipathy
to the English does not distinguish between Conservative and
Radical. Years of good government will be needed to create
an alliance against which centuries of oppression and wrong-
doing protest. We may forget, but the Irish will hardly find
themselves able to forget at present, that, while we make New-
Zealand savages British citizens as well as subjects, protect
them in the possession of their lands, and encourage them to
vote at our polling-booths and take their place as constables and
officers of the law, our fathers " planted " Ireland, and declared
it no felony to kill an Irishman on his mother-soil

In spite of their possession of much political power, and of the
* Published before the proposal of these measures.

«o GREATER ftRITAtft [CHAP, xxvn

entire city- government of several great towns, the Irish in
America are neither physically nor morally well off. Whatever
may be the case at some future day, they still find themselves
politically in English hands. The very language that they are
compelled to speak is hateful, even to men who know no other.
With an impotent spite which would be amusing were it not
very sad, a resolution was carried by acclamation through both
houses of the Fenian congress, at Philadelphia, this year, "that
the word ' English ' be unanimously dropped, and that the
words ' American language ' be used in the future."

From the Cabinet, from Congress, from every office, high or
low, not controlled by the Fenian vote, the Irish are systemati-
cally excluded ; but it cannot be American public opinion
which has prevented the Catholic Irish from rising as merchants
and traders, even in New York. Yet, while there are Belfast
names high up on the Atlantic side and in San Francisco, there
are none from Cork, none from the southern counties. It would
seem as though the true Irishman wants the perseverance to
become a successful merchant, and thrives best at pure brain-
work, or upon land. Three-fourths of the Irish in America
remain in towns, losing the attachment to the soil which is the
strongest characteristic of the Irish in Ireland, and finding no
new home : disgusted at their exclusion in America from poli-
tical life and power, it is these men who turn to Fenianism as a
relief. Through drink, through gambling, and the other vices
of homeless, thriftless men, they are soon reduced to beggary ;
and, moral as they are by nature, the Irish are nevertheless
supplying America with that which she never before possessed
— a criminal and pauper class. Of ten thousand people sent
to gaol each year in Massachusetts, six thousand are Irish born ;
in Chicago, out of the 3598 convicts of last year, only eighty-
four were native born Americans.

To the Americans, Fenianism has many aspects. The
greater number hate the Irish, but sympathise profoundly with
Ireland. Many are so desirous of seeing republicanism prevail
throughout the world that they support the Irish republic in any
way, except, indeed, by taking its paper-money, and look upon
its establishment as a first step towards the erection of a free
government that shall include England and Scotland as welL

Cttxr. xxvn.] ^SOTIIERS. 2tt

Some think the Fenians will bum the Capitol and rob the
banks ; some regard them with satisfaction, or the reverse, from
the religious point of view. One of the latter kind of lookers-
on said to me : "I was glad to see the Fenian movement, not
that I wish success to the Brotherhood as against you English,
but because I rejoice to see among Irishmen a powerful centre
of resistance to the Catholic Church. We, in this country, were
being delivered over, bound hand and foot, to the Roman
Church, and these Fenians, by their power and their violence
against the priests, have divided the Irish camp, and rescued
us." The unfortunate Canadians, for their part, ask why they
should be shot and robbed because Britain maltreats the Irish ;
but we must not forget that the Fenian raid on Canada was an
exact repetition, almost on the same ground, of the St. Alban's
raid into the American territory, during the rebellion.

The Fenians would be as absolutely without strength in
America as they are without credit were it not for the anti-
British traditions of the Democratic party, and the rankling of
the Alabama question, or rather of the remembrance of our
general conduct during the rebellion, in the hearts of the Re-
publicans. It is impossible to spend much time in New Eng-
land without becoming aware that the people of the six North-
Eastern States love us from the heart. Nothing but this can
explain the character of their feeling towards us on these Ala-
bama claims. That we should refuse an arbitration upon the
whole question is to them inexplicable, and they grieve with
wondering sorrow at our perversity.

It is not here that the legal question need be raised ; for
observers of the present position of the English race it is
enough that there exists between Britain and America a bar
to perfect friendship — a ground for future quarrel — upon
which we refuse to allow an all-embracing arbitration.* We
allege that we are the best judges of a certain portion of the?
case, that our dignity would be compromised by arbitration
upon these points ; but such dignity must always be compro*
raised by arbitration, for common friends are called in only
when each party to the dispute has a case, in the justice of

* Our failure in the arbitration has not changed the writer's mind as to
Us wisdom.

P 2

m GREATER 6£iTA.N. [CHAP.

which his dignity is bound up. Arbitration is resorted to as a
means of avoiding wars ; and, dignity or no dignity, everything
that can cause war is proper matter for arbitration. What even
if some little dignity be lost by the affair, in addition to that
which has been lost already ? No such loss can be set against
the frightful hurtfulness to the race and to the cause of freedom^
of war between Britain and America.

The question comes plainly enough to this point : we say we
are right ; America says we are wrong ; they offer arbitration,
which we refuse upon a point of etiquette — for on that ground
we decline to refer to arbitration a point which to America
appears essential. It looks to the world as though we offer to
submit to the umpire chosen those points only on which we are
already prepared to admit that we are in the wrong. America
asks us to submit, as we should do in private life, the whole
correspondence on which the quarrel stands. Even if we,
better instructed in the precedents of international law than were
the Americans, could not but be in the right, still, as we know
that intelligent and able men in the United States think other-
wise, and would fancy their cause the just one in a war which
might arise upon the difficulty, surely there is ground for arbi-
tration. It would be to the eternal disgrace of civilization that
we should set to work to cut our brothers' throats upon a point
of etiquette ; and, by declining on the ground of honour to
discuss these claims, we are compromising that honour in the
eyes of all the world.

In democracies such as America or France, every citizen
feels an insult to his country as an insult to himself. The Ala-
bama question is in the mouth or in the heart — which is worse
— of every American who talks with an Englishman in England
or America.

All nations commit, at times, the error of acting as though
they think that every people on earth, except themselves, are
unanimous in their policy. Neglecting the race distinctions
and the class distinctions which in England are added to the
universal essential differences of minds, the Americans are con-
vinced that, during the late war, we thought as one man, and
that, in this present matter of the Alabama claims, we stand
Out and act as a united people,

CHAP. ixvn.1 BROTHERS. 213

A New Yorker with whom I sta}ed at Quebec — a shrewd
but kindly fellow — was an odd instance of the American inca-
pacity to understand the British nation, which almost equals our
own inability to comprehend America. Kind and hospitable
to me, as is any American to every Englishman in all times and
places, he detested British policy, and obstinately refused to see
that there is an England larger than Downing Street, a nation
outside Pall Mall. " England was with the rebels throughout
the war." " Excuse me ; our ruling classes were so, perhaps,
but our rulers don't represent us any more than your 39th
Congress represents George Washington." In America, where
Congress does fairly represent the nation, and where there has
never been less than a quarter of the body favourable to any
policy which half the nation supported, men cannot understand
that there should exist a country which thinks one way, but,
through her rulers, speaks another. We may disown the
national policy, but we suffer for it.

The hospitality to Englishmen of the American England-hater
is extraordinary. An old Southerner in Richmond said to me,
in a breath : " I'd go and live in England if I didn't hate it as I do.
England, sir, betrayed us in the most scoundrelly way — talked
of sympathy with the South, and stood by to see us swallowed
up. I hate England, sir I Come and stay a week with me at my

place in county. Going South to-day ? Well, then, you

return this way next week. Come then ! Come on Saturday week."

When we ask, "Why do you press the Alabama claims
against us, and not the Florida, the Georgia, and the Rappa-
hannock claims against the French ?" the answer is : " Because
we don't care about the French, and what they do and think ;
besides, we owe them some courtesy after bundling them out of
Mexico in the way we did." In truth there is amongst Ameri-
cans an exaggerated estimate of the offensive powers of Great
Britain ; and such is the jealousy of young nations, that this
exaggeration becomes, of itself, a cause of danger. Were the
Americans as fully convinced, as we ourselves are, of our total
incapacity to carry on a land-war with the United States on the
western side of the Atlantic, the bolder spirits among them
would cease to feel themselves under an assumed necessity to
show us our ow» weakness and their strength.

314 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xxvn.

The chief reason why America finds much to offend her in
our conduct is, that she cares for the opinion of no other people
than the English. Before the terrible blow to her confidence
and love that our conduct during the rebellion gave, America
used morally to lean on England. Happily for herself, she is
now emancipated from the mental thraldom ; but she still
yearns towards our kindly friendship. A Napoleonic senator
harangues, a French paper declaims, against America and
Americans ; who cares ? But a Times' leader, or a speech in
Parliament from a minister of the Crown, cuts to the heart,
wounding terribly. A nation, like an individual, never quarrels
with a stranger ; there must be love at bottom for even queru-
lousness to arise. While I was in Boston, one of the foremost
writers of America said to me in conversation : " I have no
son, but I had a nephew of my own name ; a grand fellow ;
young, handsome, winning in his ways, full of family affections,
an ardent student. He felt it his duty to go to the front as a
private in one of our regiments of Massachusetts volunteers,
and was promoted for bravery to a captaincy. All of us here
looked on him as a New England Philip Sydney, the type of
all that was manly, chivalrous, and noble. The very day that
I received news of his being killed in leading his company
against a regiment, I was forced by my duties here to read a
leader in one of your chief papers upon the officering of our
army, in which it was more than hinted that our troops con-
sisted of German cut-throats and pot-house Irish, led by sharpers
and broken politicians. Can you wonder at my being bitter ?"

That there must be in America a profound feeling of affection
for our country is shown by the avoidance of war when we re-
cognised the rebels as belligerents ; and, again, at the time of
the " Trent " affair, when the surface cry was overwhelmingly
for battle, and the Cabinet only able to tide it over by promising
the West war with England as soon as the rebellion was put
down. " One war at a time, gentlemen," said Lincoln. The
man who, of all in America, had most to lose by war with
England, said to me of the " Trent " affair : " I was written to

by C to do all I could for peace. I wrote him back that

if our Attorney-General decided that our seizure of the men
was lawful, I would spend my last dollar in the cause,"

CHAP, xxvn,] BROTHERS. 115

The Americans, everywhere affectionate towards the indivi-
dual Englishman, make no secret of their feeling that the first
advances towards a renewal of the national friendship ought
to come from us. They might remind us that our Maori
subjects have a proverb, " Let friends settle their disputes as
frieuds."

216 G KEATS If VKWA1H. [ciur xxvin.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

AMERICA.

WE are coasting again, gliding through calm blue waters,
watching the dolphins as they play, and the boobies as they fly
stroke and stroke with the paddles of the ship. Mountains
rise through the warm misty air, and form a long towering line
upon the upper skies. Hanging high above us are the Volcano
of Fire and that of Water — twin menacers of Guatemala City.
In the sixteenth century, the water-mountain drowned it ; in
the eighteenth, it was burnt by the fire-hill. Since then, the
city has been shaken to pieces by earthquakes, and of sixty
thousand men and women, hardly one escaped. Down the
valley, between the peaks, we have through the mahogany
groves an exquisite distant view towards the city. Once more
passing on, we get peeps, now of West Honduras, and now of
the island coffee plantations of Costa Rica. The heat is terri-
ble. It was just here, if we are to believe Drake, that he fell
in with a shower so hot and scalding, that each drop burnt
its hole through his men's clothes as they hung up to dry.
" Steep stories," it is clear, were known before the plantation
of America.

Now that the time has come for a leave-taking of the conti-
nent, we can begin to reflect upon facts gleaned during visits to
twenty-nine of the forty-five territories and States — twenty-nine
empires the size of Spain.

A man may see American countries, from the pine-wastes of
Maine to the slopes of the Sierra ; may talk with American
men and women, from the sober citizens of Boston to Digger
Indians in California ; may eat of American dishes, from jerked
buffalo in ColQradQ to clambakes on the shores near Salem \

CHAP, xx vm.] A' . .1C A. 217

and yet, from the time he first " smells the molasses " at Nan-
tucket light-ship to the moment when the pilot quits him at the
Golden Gate, may have no idea of an America. You may
have seen the East, the South, the West, the Pacific States, and
yet have failed to find America. It is not till you have left her
shores that her image grows up in the mind.

The first thing that strikes the Englishman just landed in
New York is the apparent Latinization of the English in
America ; but before he leaves the country, he comes to see
that this is at most a local fact, and that the true moral of
America is the vigour of the English race — the defeat of the
cheaper by the dearer peoples, the victory of the man whose
food costs four shillings a day over the man whose food costs
four pence. Excluding the Atlantic cities, the English in
America are absorbing the Germans and the Celts, destroying
the Red Indians, and checking the advance of the Chinese.

The Anglo-Saxon is the only extirpating race on earth. Up
to the commencement of the now inevitable destruction of the
Red Indians of Central North America, of the Maories, ana1
of the Australians by the English colonists, no numerous race
had ever been blotted out by an invader. The Danes and
Normans amalgamated with the English, the Tartars with the
Chinese, the Goths and Burgundians with the Gauls : the
Spaniards not only never annihilated a people, but have them-
selves been all but expelled by the Indians in Mexico and
South America. The Portuguese in Ceylon, the Dutch in
Java, the French in Canada and Algeria, have conquered but
not killed off the native peoples. Hitherto it has been nature's
rule, that the race that peopled a country in the earliest historic
days should people it to the end of time. The American
problem is this : Does the law, in a modified shape, hold good,
in spite of the destruction of the native population ? Is it true
that the negroes, now that they are free, are commencing slowly
to die out ? that the New Englanders are dying fast, and their
places being supplied by immigrants ? Can the English in
America, in the long run, survive the common fate of all
migrating races ? Is it true that, if the American settlers con-
tinue to exist, it will be at the price of being no longer English,
but Red Indian ? V is certain that the English families long

2i 8 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP, xsvm

in the land have the features of the extirpated race ; on the
other hand, in the negroes there is at present no trace of any
change, save in their becoming dark-brown instead of black.

The Maories — an immigrant race — were dying off in New
Zealand when we landed there. The Indians of Mexico —
another immigrant people — had themselves undergone decline,
numerical and moral, .when we first became acquainted with
them. Are we English in turn to degenerate abroad, under
pressure of a great natural law forbidding change ? It is easy
to say that the English in Old England are not a native but an
immigrant race ; that they show no symptoms of decline. There,
however, the change was slight, the distance short, the difference
of climate small.

The rapidity of the disappearance of physical type is equalled
at least, if not exceeded, by that of the total alteration of the
moral characteristics of the immigrant races — the entire destruc-
tion of eccentricity, in short. The change that comes over
those among the Irish who do not remain in the towns is not
greater than that which overtakes the English handworkers, of
whom some thousands reach America each year. Gradually
settling down on land, and finding themselves lost in a sea of
intelligence, and freed from the inspiring obstacles of antiquated
institutions and class prejudice, the English handicraftsman,
ceasing to be roused to aggressive Radicalism by the opposition
of sinister interests, merges into the contented homestead settler,
or adventurous backwoodsman. Greater even than this revolu-
tion of character is that which falls upon the Celt. Not only is
it a fact known alike to physiologists and statisticians, that the
children of Irish parents born in America are, physically, not
Irish, but Americans, but the like is true of the moral type :
the change in this is at least as sweeping. The son of Fenian
Pat and bright-eyed Biddy is the normal gaunt American, quick
of thought, but slow of speech, whom we have begun to re-
cognise as the latest product of the Saxon race, when housed
upon the Western prairies, or in the pine-woods of New
England.

For the moral change in the British workman it is not difficult
to account : the man who will leave country, home, and friends
to seek new fortunes in America, is essentially not an oidinary

CHAP, xxvra.] AMERICA. 219

man. As a nile, he is above the average in intelligence, or, if
defective in this point, he makes up for lack of wit by the
possession of concentrativeness and energy. Such a man will
have pushed himself to the front in his club, his union, or his
shop, before he emigrates. In England, he is somebody; in
America, he finds all hands contented, or, if not this, at all
events too busy to complain of such ills as they profess to
labour under. Among contented men, his equals both in in-
telligence and ambition, in a country of perfect freedom of
speech, of manners, of laws, and of society, the occupation of
his mind is gone, and he comes to think himself what others
seem to think him — a nobody ; a man who no longer is a living
force. He settles upon land ; and when the world knows him
no more, his children are happy corn-growers in his stead.

The shape of North America makes the existence of distinct
peoples within her limits almost impossible. An upturned bowl,
with a mountain-rim, from which the streams run inward to-
wards the centre, she must fuse together all the races that settle
within her borders, and the fusion must now be in an English
mould.

There are homogeneous foreign populations in several portions
of the United States ; not only the Irish and Chinese, at whose
prospects we have already glanced, but also Germans in Penn-
sylvania, Spanish in Florida, French in Louisiana and at Sault
de Ste. Marie. In Wisconsin there is a Norwegian population of
over a hundred thousand, retaining their own language and
their own architecture, and presenting the appearance of a tough
morsel for the English to digest ; at the same time, the Swedes
were the first settlers of Delaware and New Jersey, and there
they have disappeared.

Milwaukee is a Norwegian town. The houses are narrow
and high, the windows many, with circular tops ornamented in
wood or dark-brown stone, and a heavy wooden cornice crowns
the front. The churches have the wooden bulb and spire which
are characteristic of the Scandinavian public buildings. The
Norwegians will not mix with other races, and invariably flock
to spots where there is already a large population speaking their
own tongue. Those who enter Canada generally become dis-
satisfied with the country, and pass on into Wisconsin, or Mirr

120 GREATER BRITAIS. [CHAP, xxvin.

nesota, but the Canadian Government has now under its
consideration a plan for founding a Norwegian colony on Lake
Huron. The numbers of this people are not so great as to
make it important to inquire whether they will ever merge into
the general population. Analogy would lead us to expect that
they will be absorbed; their existence is not historical, like
that of the French in Lower Canada.

From Burlington, in Iowa, I had visited a spot the history of
which is typical of the development of America — Nauvoo : — the
" goodly resting-place." Founded in 1840 by Joe Smith, the
Mormon city stood upon a bluff overhanging the Des Moines
rapids of the Mississippi, presenting on the land side the aspect
of a gentle, graceful slope surmounted by a plain. After the
fanatical pioneers of English civilization had been driven from
the city, and their temple burnt, there came Cabet's Icarian
band, who tried to found a new France in the desert ; but in
1856 the leader died, and his people dispersed themselves about
the states of Iowa and Missouri. Next came the English settlers,
active, thriving, regardless of tradition, and Nauvoo is entering
on a new life as the capital of a wine-growing country. I found
Cabet and the Mormons alike forgotten. The ruins of the
temple have disappeared, and the huge stones have been used
up in cellars, built to contain the Hock — a pleasant wine, like
Ze.tinger.

The bearing upon religion of the gradual destruction of race
is of great moment to the world. Christianity will gain by the
change ; but the question — which of its many branches will
receive support? is one' which only admits of an imperfect answer.
Arguing a priori, we should expect to find that, on the one
hand, a tendency towards unity would manifest itself, taking the
shape, perhaps, of a gain of strength by the Catholic and
Anglican Churches ; on the other hand, there would be a
contrary and still stronger tendency towards an infinite multi-
plication of beliefs, till millions of men and women would become
each of them his own Church. Coming to the actual cases in
which we can trace the tendencies that commence to manifest
themselves, we find that in America the Anglican Church is
gaining ground, especially on the Pacific side, and that the
Catholics do not seem to meet with any such success ag we.

. ifcvmV] AMERICJu ill

should have looked for } retaining, indeed, theif hold over the
Irish women and a portion of the men, and having their historic
French branches in Louisiana and in Canada, but not, unless
it be in the cities of New York and Philadelphia, making much
way among the English.

Between San Francisco and Chicago — for religious purposes
the most cosmopolitan of cities — we have to draw distinctions.
In the Pacific city, the disturbing cause is the presence of New
Yorkers ; in the metropolis of the North-Western States, it is
the dominance of New England ideas : still, we shall find no
two cities so free from local colour, and from the influence of
race. The result of an examination is not encouraging: in
both cities there is much external show in the shape of church
attendance; in neither does religion strike its roots deeply
into the hearts of the citizens, except so far as it is alien and
imported.

The Spiritualist and Unitarian Churches are both of them
in Chicago extremely strong: they support newspapers and
periodicals of their own, and are led by men and women
of remarkable ability, but they are not the less Cambridge
Unitarianism, Boston Spiritualism; there is nothing of the
North-West about them. In San Francisco, on the other hand,
Anglicanism is prospering, but it is New York Episcopalianism,
sustained by immigrants and money from the East ; in no sense
is it a Californian Church.

Throughout America the multiplication of Churches is rapid,
but, among the native-born Americans, Supernaturalism is
advancing with great strides. The Shakers are strong in
thought, the Spiritualists in wealth and numbers ; Communism
gains ground, but not Polygamy — the Mormon is a purely
European Church.

There is just now progressing in America a great movement,
headed by the " Radical Unitarians," towards " free religion,"
or Church without Creed. The leaders deny that there is
sufficient security for the spread of religion in each man's
individual action ; they desire collective work by all free-
thinkers and liberal religionists in the direction of truth and
purity of life. Christianity is higher than dogma, we are told :
there is no way out of infinite multiplication of creeds but by

J22 G&EATEE B&tTAlN. [CIUP.

their total extirpation. Oneness of purpose and a common
love for truth form the members' only tie. Elder Frederick
Evans said to me : "All truth forms part of Shakerism ;" but
these free religionists assure us that in all truth consists their
sole religion.

The distinctive feature of these American philosophical and
religious systems is their gigantic width : for instance, every
human being who admits that disembodied spirits may in any
way hold intercourse with dwellers upon earth, whatever else he
may believe or disbelieve, is claimed by the Spiritualists as a
member of their Church. They tell us that by " Spiritualism
they understand whatever bears relation to spirit ; " their
system embraces all existence, brute, human, and divine ; in
fact, "the real man is a spirit." According to these ardent
proselytizers, every poet, every man with a grain of imagination
in his nature, is a " Spiritualist." They claim Plato, Socrates,
Milton, Shakespeare, Washington Irving, Charles Dickens,
Luther, Joseph Addison, Melancthon, Paul, Stephen, the whole
of the Hebrew prophets, Homer, and John Wesley, among the
members of their Church. They have lately canonized new
saints : St. Confucius, St. Theodore (Parker), St. Ralph (Waldo
Emerson), St. Emma (Hardinge), all figure in their calendar.
It is a noteworthy fact that the saints are mostly resident in
New England.

The tracts published at the Spiritual Clarion office, Auburn,
New York, put forward Spiritualism as a religion which is to
stand towards existing Churches as did Christianity towards
Judaism, and announce a new dispensation to the peoples of
the earth " who have sown their wild oats in Christianity," but
they spell supersede with a " c."

This strange religion has long since left behind the rappings
and table-turnings in which it took its birth. The secret of its
success is that it supplies to every man the satisfaction of the
universal craving for the supernatural, in any form in which he
will receive it. The Spiritualists claim two millions of active
believers and five million " favourers." in America.

The presence of a large German population is thought by
some to have an important bearing on the religious future of
America, but the Germans have hitherto kept themselves apart

ettAt>. xxvm.] AMERICA. 133

from the intellectual progress of the nation. They, as a rule,
withdraw from towns, and, retaining their language and sup-
porting local papers of their own, live out of the world of
American literature and politics, taking however, at rare inter-
vals, a patriotic part in national affairs, as was notably. the case
at the time of the late rebellion. Living thus by themselves,
they have even less influence upon American religious thought
than have the Irish, who, speaking the English tongue, and
dwelling almost exclusively in towns, are brought more into
contact with the daily life of the republic. The Germans in
America are in the main pure materialists under a certain show
of deism, but hitherto there has been no alliance between them
and the powerful Chicago Radical Unitarians, difference oi
language having thus far proved a bar to the formation of a
league which would otherwise have been inevitable.

On the whole, it would seem that for the moment religious
prospects are not bright ; the tendency is rather towards in-
tense and unhealthily-developed feeling in the few, and sub-
scription to some one of the Episcopalian Churches — Catholic,
Anglican, or Methodist — among the many, coupled with real
indifference. Neither the tendency to unity of creeds nor that
towards infinite multiplication of beliefs has yet made that pro-
gress which abstract speculation would have led us to expect ;
but so far as we can judge from the few facts before us, there is
much likelihood that multiplication will in the future prove too
strong for unity.

After all, there is not in America a greater wonder than the
Englishman himself, for it is to this continent that you must
come to find him in full possession of his powers. Two
hundred and fifty millions of people speak or are ruled by
those who speak the English tongue, and inhabit a third of the
habitable globe ; but, at the present rate of increase, in sixty
years there will be two hundred and fifty millions of Englishmen
dwelling in the United States alone. America has somewhat
grown since the time when it was gravely proposed to call her
Alleghania, after a chain of mountains which, looking from this
western side, may be said to skirt her eastern border, and the
loftiest peaks of which are but half the height of the very passes
of the Rocky Mountains.

GREAfBR MtTAlX. [cHAt. xvri.

are respected, and if great mineral wealth is not found to exist
in Utah, Mormonism will not be exposed to any much larger
Gentile intrusion than it has to cope with now. Settlers who
can go to California or to Colorado " pares " will hardly fix
themselves in the Utah desert. The Mexican table-lands will be
annexed before Gentile immigrants seriously trouble Brigham.
Gold and New England are the most dreaded foes of Mormon-
dom. Nothing can save polygamy if lodes and placers such as
those of all the surrounding States are found in Utah ; nothing
can save it if the New Englanders determine to put it down.

Were Congress to enforce the Homestead laws in Utah, and
provide for the presence of an overwhelming Gentile population,
polygamy would not only die of itself, but drag Mormonism down
in its fall. Brigham knows more completely than we can the
necessity of isolation. He would not be likely to await the blow
which increased Gentile immigration would deal his power.

If New England decides to act, the table-lands of Mexico
will see played once more the sad comedy of Utah. Again the
Mormons will march into Mexican territory, again to wake
some day, and find it American. Theirs, however, will once
more be the pride of having proved the pioneers of that English
civilization which is destined to overspread the temperate world.
The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo annexed Utah to the United
States, but Brigham Young annexed it to Anglo-Saxondom.

PART It,

POLYNESIA.

CHAPTER I.

PITCAIRN ISLAND.

PANAIWA is a picturesque time-worn Spanish city, that rises
abruptly from the sea in a confused pile of decaying bastions
and decayed cathedrals, while a dense jungle of mangrove and
bamboo threatens to bury it in rich greenery. The forest is
filled with baboons and lizards of gigantic size, and is gay with
the bright plumage of the toucans and macaws, while, within
the walls, every housetop bears its living load of hideous turkey-
buzzards, foul-winged and bloodshot-eyed.

It was the rainy season (which here, indeed, lasts for three-
quarters of the year), and each day was an alternation of
shower-bath, and vapour-bath with sickly sun. On the first
night of my stay, there was a lunar rainbow, which I went on
to the roof of the hotel to watch. The misty sky was white
with the reflected light of the hidden moon, which was obscured
by an inky cloud that seemed a tunnel through the heavens.
In a few minutes I was driven from my post by the tropical
rain.

At the railway station, I parted from my Californian friends,
who were bound for Aspinwall, and thence by steamer to New
York. A stranger scene it has not often been my fortune to
behold. There cannot have been less than a thousand natives,
wearing enormous hats and little else, and selling everything,
from linen suits to the last French novel. A tame jaguar, a
pelican, parrots, monkeys, pearls, shells, flowers, green cocoa-
nuts and turtles, mangoes and wild dogs, were among the
things for sale. The station was guarded by the army of the
Republic of New Granada, consisting of five officers, a bugler,
a drummer, and nineteen rank and file. Six of the men wore

Q 2

228 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. i.

red trousers and dirty shirts for uniform ; the rest dressed as
they pleased, which was generally in Adamic fashion. Not
even the officers had shoes ; and of the men, one was a full-
blood Indian, some ten were negroes, and the remainder
nondescripts, but among them was, of course, an Irishman from
Cork or Kilkenny. After the train had started, the troops
formed, and marched briskly through the town, the drummer
trotting along some twenty yards before the company, French-
fashion, and beating the retraite. The French invalids from
Acapulco, who were awaiting in Panama the arrival of an
Imperial frigate at Aspinwall, stood in the streets to see the
New Granadans pass, twirling their moustaches, and smiling
grimly. One old drum-major, lean and worn with fever, turned
to me, and, shrugging his shoulders, pointed to his side : the
Granadans had their bayonets tied on with string.

Whether Panama will continue to hold its present position as
the " gate of the Pacific " is somewhat doubtful : Nicaragua
offers greater advantages to the English, Tehuantepec to the
American traders. The Gulf of Panama and the ocean for a
^reat distance to the westward from its mouth are notorious for
their freedom from all breezes ; the gulf lies, indeed, in the
equatorial belt of calms, and sailing-vessels can never make
much use of the port of Panama. Aspinwall or Colon, on the
Atlantic side, has no true port whatever. As long, however, as
vhe question is merely one of railroad and steamship traffic,
Panama may hold its own against the other isthmus cities ;
but when the canal is cut, the selected spot should be one
beyond the reach of calms — in Nicaragua or Mexico.

From Panama I sailed in one of the ships of the new Colo-
nial Line, for Wellington, in New Zealand — the longest steam
voyage in the world. Our course was to be a " great circle "
to Pitcairn Island, and another great circle thence to Cape
Palliser, near Wellington — a distance in all of some 6600 miles ;
but our actual course was nearer 7000. When off the Galla-
pagos Islands, we met the cold southerly wind and water,
known as the Chilian current, and crossed the equator in a
breeze which forced us all to wear great-coats, and to dream
that, instead of entering the southern hemisphere, we had come
by mistake within the arctic circle.

. 1.J PITCAIRN ISLAND. «9

After traversing lonely and hitherto unknown seas and looking
in vain for a new guano island, on the sixteenth day we worked
out the ship's position at noon with more than usual care, if
that were possible, and found that in four hours we ought to be
at Pitcairn Island. At half-past two o'clock, land was sighted
right ahead ; and by four o'clock, we were in the bay, such as
it is, at Pitcairn.

Although at sea there was a calm, the surf from the ground •
swell beat heavily upon the shore, and we were fain content
ourselves with the view of the island from our decks. It con-
sists of a single volcanic peak, hung with an arras of green
creeping plants, passion-flowers, and trumpet-vines. As for the
people, they came off to us dancing over the seas in their canoes,
and bringing us green oranges, and bananas, while a huge
Union Jack was run up on their flagstaff by those who remained
on shore.

As the first man came on deck, he rushed to the captain, and
shaking hands violently, cried, in pure English, entirely free
from accent, "How do you do, captain? How's Victoria ?"
There was no disrespect in the omission of the title " Queen ; "
the question seemed to come from the heart. The bright-eyed
lads, Adams and Young, descendants of the Bounty mutineers,
who had been the first to climb our sides, announced the
coming of Moses Young, the " magistrate " of the isle, who
presently boarded us in state. He was a grave and gentlemanly
man, English in appearance, but somewhat slightly built, as
were, indeed, the lads. The magistrate came oft" to lay before
the captain the facts relating to a feud which existed between
two parties of the islanders, and upon which they required arbi-
tration. He had been under the impression that we were a
man-of-war, as we had fired two guns on entering the bay, and
being received by our officers, who wore the cap of the Naval
Reserve, he continued in the belief till the captain explained
what the " Rakaia " was, and why she had called at Pitcairn.

The case which the captain was to have heard judicially was
laid before us for our advice while the flues of the ship were
being cleaned. When the British Government removed the
Pitcairn Islanders to Norfolk Island, no return to the old home
was contemplated, but the indolent half-castes found the task

23o GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. i.

of keeping the Norfolk Island convict roads in good repair one
heavier than they cared to perform, and fifty-two of them have
lately come back to Pitcairn. A widow who returned with the
others claims a third of the whole island as having been the
property of her late husband, and is supported in her demand
by half the islanders, while Moses Young and the remainder of
the people admit the facts, but assert that the desertion of the
island was complete, and operated as an entire abandonment
of titles, which the re-occupation cannot revive. The success
of the woman's claim, they say, would be the destruction of the
prosperity of Pitcairn.

The case would be an extremely curious one if it had to be
decided upon legal grounds, for it would raise complicated
questions both on the nature of British citizenship, and the
character of the " occupation " title ; but it seemed probable
that the islanders would abide by the decision of the Governor
of New South Wales, to which colony they consider themselves
in some degree attached.

When we had drawn up a case to be submitted to Sir John
Young at Sydney, our captain made a commercial treaty with
the magistrate, who agreed to supply the ships of the new line,
whenever daylight allowed them to call at Pitcairn, with oranges,
bananas, ducks, and fowls, for which he was to receive cloth
and tobacco in exchange — tobacco being the money of the
Polynesia! \ Archipelago. Mr. Young told us that his people
had thirty sheep, which were owned by each of the families in
turn, the household taking care of them, and receiving the
profits for one year. Water, he said, sometimes falls short in
the island, but they then make use of the juice of the green
cocoa-nut. Their school is excellent ; all the children can
read and write, and in the election of magistrates they have
female suffrage.

When we went on deck again to talk to the younger men,
Adams asked us a new question : " Have you a Sunday at
Home, or a British Workman ? " Our books and papers having
been ransacked, Moses Young prepared to leave the ship, taking
with him presents from the stores. Besides the cloth, tobacco,
hats, and linen, there was a bottle of brandy ; given for medi-
cine, as the islanders are strict teetotallers. While Young

CHAP. i.l PITCAIRN ISLAND. jji

held the bottle in his hand, afraid to trust the lads with it,
Adams read the kbel and cried out, "Brandy? How much
for a dose ? . . . Oh, yes ! all right — I know : it's good for the
women ?" When they at last left the ship's side, one of the
canoes was filled with a crinoline and blue silk dress for Mrs.
Young, and another with a red-and-brown tartan for Mrs.
Adams, both given by lady passengers, while the lads went
ashore in dust-coats and smoking-caps.

Now that the French, with their singular habit of everywhere
annexing countries which other colonizing nations have rejected,
are rapidly occupying all the Polynesian groups except the only
ones that are of value — namely, the Sandwich Islands and
New Zealand — Pitcairn becomes of some interest as a solitary
British post on the very border of the French dominions ; and
it has for us the stronger claim to notice which is raised by
the fact that it has figured for the last few years on the wrong
side of our British budget.

As we stood out from the bay into the lonely seas, the island
peak showed a black outline against a pale-green sky, but in
the west the heavy clouds that in the Pacific never fail to
cumber the horizon were glowing with a crimson cast by the
now-set sun, and the dancing wavelets were tinted with reflected
hues.

The " scarlet shafts," which poets have ascribed to the tropi-
cal sunrise, are common at sun.sv?/ in the South Pacific. Almost
every night the declining sun, sinking behind the clouds, throws
rays across the sky — not yellow, as in Europe and America, but
red or rosy pink. On the night after leaving Pitcairn, I saw a
still grander effect of light and colour. The sun had set. and
in the west the clear greenish sky was hidden by pitch-black
thunderclouds. Through these were crimson caves.

On the twenty-ninth day of our voyage, we sighted the
frowning cliffs of Palliser, where the bold bluff, coming sheer
down three thousand feet, receives the full shock of the South
Seas — a fitting introduction to the grand scenery of New
Zealand ; and within a few hours we were running up the great
sea-lake of Port Nicholson towards long lines of steamers at a
wharf, behind which were the cottages of Wellington, the
capital

.2J3 GREATER BRITAIN. [cif\l>. 1.

To me, coming from San Francisco and the Nevadan towns,
Wellington appeared very English and extremely quiet; the
town is sunny and still, but with a holiday look ; indeed I
could not help fancying that it was Sunday. A certain haziness
as to what was the day of the week prevailed among the pas-
sengers and crew, for we had arrived upon our Wednesday,
the New Zealand Thursday, and so, without losing an hour,
lost a day ; which, unless by going round the world the other
way, can never be regained. The bright colours of the painted
wooden houses, the clear air, the rose-beds, and the emerald-
green grass, are the true cause of the holiday look of the New
Zealand towns, and Wellington is the gayest of them all ; for,
owing to the frequency of earthquakes, the townsfolk are not
allowed to build in brick or stone. The natives say that once in
every month "Ruaimoki turns himself," and sad things follow
to the shaken earth.

It was now November, the New Zealand spring, and the
outskirts of Wellington were gay with the cherry-trees in full
fruiting, and English dog-roses in full bloom, while on every
road-side bank the gorse blazed in its coat of yellow : there
was, too, to me, a singular charm in the bright green turf, after
the tawny grass of California,

Without making a long halt, I started for the South Island,
first steaming across Cook's Straits, and up Queen Charlotte
Sound to Picton, and then through the French Pass — a narrow
passage filled with fearful whirlpools — to Nelson, a gem-like
little Cornish village. After a day's " cattle-branding " with an
old college friend at his farm in the valley of the Maitai, I sailed
again for the South, laying for a night in Massacre Bay, to avoid
the worst of a tremendous gale, and then coasting down to The
Buller and Hokitika — the new gold-fields of the colonies.

23*

CHAPTER II.

HOKITIKA.

PLACED in the very track of storms, and open to the sweep o<
rolling seas from every quarter, exposed to waves that run from
pole to pole, or from South Africa to Cape Horn, the shores of
New Zealand are famed for swell and surf, and her western rivers
for the danger of their bars. Insurances at Melbourne are five
times as high for the voyage to Hokitika as for the longer cruise
to Brisbane.

In our little steamer of a hundred tons, built to cross the
bars, we had reached the mouth of the Hokitika river soon after
dark, but lay all night some ten miles to the south-west of the
port. As we steamed in the early morning from our anchorage,
there rose up on the east the finest sunrise view on which it has
been my fortune to set eyes.

A hundred miles of the Southern Alps stood out upon a pale-
blue sky in curves of a gloomy white that were just beginning
to blush with pink, but ended to the southward in a cone of fire
that blazed up from the ocean : it was the snow-dome of Mount
Cook struck by the rising sun. The evergreen bush, flaming
with the crimson of the rata-blooms, hung upon the mountain-
side, and covered the plain with a dense jungle. It was one of
those sights that haunt men for years, like the eyes of Mary in
Bellini's Milan picture.

On the bar, three ranks of waves appeared to stand fixed in
walls of surf. These huge rollers are sad destroyers of the New
Zealand coasting-ships : a steamer was lost here a week before
my visit, and the harbour-master's whale-boat dashed in pieces,
and two men drowned.

Lashing everything that was on deck, and battening down

234 ORE ATE R BRITAIN. LCHAP. «

the hatches in case we should ground in crossing, we prepared

to iim the gauntlet. The steamers often ground for an instant

while in the trough between the waves, and the second sea,

pooping them, sweeps them from end to end, but carries them

. into the still water. Watching our time, we were borne on a

tgreat rolling white-capped wave into the quiet lakelet that forms

jthe harbour, just as the sun, coming slowly up behind the range,

^was firing the Alps from north to south; but it was not till we

lad lain some minutes at the wharf that the sun rose to us poor

nortals of the sea and plain. Hokitika Bay is strangely like

2;he lower portion of the Lago Maggiore, but Mount Rosa is

miferior to Mount Cook.

aH As I walked up from the quay to the town, looking for the

evEmpire " Hotel, which I had heard was the best in Hokitika,

to spied a boy carrying a bundle of some newspapers. It was the

.arly edition for the up-country coaches, but I asked if he could

o,pare me a copy. He put one into my hand. " How much ?"

fl asked. "A snapper." "A snapper?" "Ay — a tizzy." Under-

. standing this more familiar term, I gave him a shilling. Instead

of " change," he cocked up his knee, slapt the shilling down on

it, and said " Cry !" I accordingly cried " Woman!" and won,

he loyally returning the coin, and walking off minus a paper.

When I reached that particular gin-palace which was known
as the hotel, I found that all the rooms were occupied, but that
I could, if I pleased, lie down on a deal side-table in the billiard-
room. In our voyage down the coast from Nelson, we had
brought for The Buller and for Hokitika a cabin full of cut
flowers for bouquets, of which the diggers are . extremely fond.
The fact was pretty enough ; the store set upon a single rose — •
" an English rosebud " — culled from a plant that had been
brought from the old country in a clipper ship, was still more
touching, but the flowers made sleep below impossible, and it
had been blowing too hard for me to sleep on deck, so that I
was glad to lie down upon my table for an hour's rest. The
boards were rough and full of cracks, and I began to dream
that, walking on the landing-stage, I ran against a man, who
drew his revolver on me. In wrenching it from him I hurt my
hand in the lock, and woke to find my fingers pinched in one
of the chinks of the long table. Despairing of further sleep, J

CHAP, n.j HOKITIKA. «35

started to walk through Hokitika, and to explore the " clearings"
which the settlers are making in the bush.

At Pakihi and The Buller, I had already seen the places to
which the latest gold-digging " rush " had taken place, with the
result of planting there some thousands of men with nothing to
eat but gold — for diggers, however shrewd, fall an easy prey to
those who tell them of spots where gold may be had for the
digging. No attempt is at present made to grow even vegetables
for the diggers' food : every one is engrossed in the search foi
gold. It is true that the dense jungle is being driven back frorr
the diggers' camps by fire and sword, but the clearing is made
only to give room for tents and houses. At The Buller, I hac'
found the forest — which comes down at present to the water11
edge, and crowds upon the twenty shanties and hundred tent^
and boweries which form the town — smoking with fires on ever3
side, and the parrots chattering with fright. The fires obstinatelf
refused to spread, but the tall feathery trees were falling fast1
under the axes of some hundred diggers, who seemed not to
have much romantic sympathy for the sufferings of the tree-ferns'
they had uprooted, or of the passion-flowers they were tearing
from the evergreens they had embraced.

The soil about The Fox, The Buller, The Okitiki, and the
other west-coast rivers on which gold is found, is a black leaf-
mould of extraordinary depth and richness; but in New Zealand,
as in America, the poor lands are first occupied by the settlers,
because the fat soils will pay for the clearing only when there is
already a considerable population on the land. On this west
coast it rains nearly all the year, and vegetation has such power,
that "rainy Hokitika" must long continue to be fed from
Christchurch and from Nelson, for it is as hard to keep the land
clear as it is at the first to clear it

The profits realised upon ventures from Nelson to the Gold
Coast are enormous ; nothing less than fifty per cent, will com-
pensate the owners for losses on the bars. The first cattle
imported from .Nelson to The Buller fetched at the latter place
double the price they had cost only two days earlier. One
result of this maritime usury that was told me by the steward of
the steamer in which I came down from Nelson is worth record-
ing for the benefit of the Economists. They had on board, he

»j6 CHEATER B&tTAlff. [CHAP. n.

said, a stock of spirits, sufficient for several trips, but they
altered their prices according to locality ; from Nelson to The
Buller, they charged 6d. a drink, but, once in the river, the price
rose to is., at which it remained until the ship left port upon
her return to Nelson, when it fell again to 6d. A drover coming
down in charge of cattle was a great friend of this steward, and
the latter confirmed the story which he had told me by waking
the drover when we were off The Buller bar : " Say, mister, if
you want a drink, you'd better take it. It'll be shilling drinks
in five minutes."

The Hokitikians flatter themselves that their city is the
" most rising place " on earth, and it must be confessed that if
population alone is to be regarded, the rapidity of its growth
has been amazing. At the time of my visit, one year and a
half had passed since the settlement was formed by a few
diggers, and it already had a permanent population of ten
thousand, while no less than sixty thousand diggers and their
friends claimed it for their head-quarters. San Francisco itself
did not rise so fast, Melbourne not much faster ; but Hokitika,
it must be remembered, is not only a gold-field port, but itself
upon the gold-field. It is San Francisco and Placerville in one —
Ballarat and Melbourne.

Inferior in its banks and theatres to Virginia City, or even
Austin, there is one point in which Hokitika surpasses every
American mining town that I have seen — the goodness, namely,
of its roads. Working upon them in the bright morning sun
which this day graced " rainy Hokitika " with its presence,
were a gang of diggers and sailors, dressed in the clothes which
every one must wear in a digging town unless he wishes to be
stared at by the passers-by. Even sailors on shore " for a run "
here wear cord breeches and high tight-fitting boots, often
armed with spurs ; though, as there are no horses except those
of the Gold-Coast Police, they cannot enjoy much riding. The
gang working on the roads were like the people I met about the
town — rough, but not ill-looking fellows. To my astonishment,
I saw, conspicuous among their red shirts and " junipers," the
blue-and-white uniform of the mounted police ; and from the
way in which the constables handled their loaded rifles, 1 came
to the conclusion that the road-menders must be a gang of

CHAP, ii.] HOKlllKA. 337

prisoners. On inquiry, I found that all the New Zealand
" convicts," including under this sweeping title men convicted
for mere petty offences, and sentenced to hard labour for a
month, are made to do good practical work upon the roads.
I was reminded of the Missourian practice of setting prisoners
to dig out the stumps that cumber the streets of the younger
towns : the sentence on a man for being drunk is said to be
that he pull up a black walnut stump ; drunk and disorderly,
a large buck-eye ; assaulting the sheriff, a tough old hickory
root, and so on.

The hak and beard of the short-sentence " convicts " in
New Zealand is never cut, and there is nothing hang-dog in
their looks ; but their faces are often bright, and even happy.
These cheerful prisoners are for the most part "runners" —
sailors who have broken their agreements in order to get upon
the diggings, and who bear their punishment philosophically,
with the hope of future " finds " before them.

When the great rush to Melbourne occurred in 1848, ships
by the hundred were left in the Yarra without a single hand to
navigate them. Nuggets in the hand would not tempt sailors
away from the hunt after nuggets in the bush. Ships left
Hobson's Bay for Chili with half-a-dozen hands ; and in one
case that came within my knowledge, a captain, his mate, and
three Maories took a brig across the Pacific to San Francisco.

As the morning wore on, I came near seeing something of
more serious crime than that for which these " runners " were
convicted. " Sticking-up," as highway robbery is called in the
colonies, has always been common in Australia and New Zea-
land, but of late the bushrangers, deserting their old tactics,
have commenced to murder as well as rob. In three months
of 1866, no less than fifty or sixty murders took place in the
South Island of New Zealand, all of them committed, it was
believed, by a gang known as "The Thugs." Mr. George
Dobson, the Government surveyor, was murdered near Hokitik*
in May, but it was not till November that the gang was broken
up by the police and volunteers. Levy, Kelly, and Burgess,
three of the most notorious of the villains, were on their trial
at Hokitika while I was there ; and Sullivan, also a member of
the band, who had been taken at Nelson, had volunteered

*38 GREATER BRITAIN. [,THAP. n.

to give evidence against them. Sullivan was to come by
steamer from the North, without touching at The Buller or The
Grey ; and when the ship was signalled, the excitement of the
population became considerable, the diggers asserting that
Sullivan was not only the basest, but the most guilty of all
the gang. As the vessel ran across the bar and into the bay,
the police were marched down to the landing-place, and a
yelling crowd surrounded them, threatening to lynch the
informer. When the steamer came alongside the wharf, Sulli-
van was not to be seen, and it was soon discovered that he had
been landed in a whale-boat upon the outer beach. Off rushed
the crowd to intercept the party in the town, but they found
the gaol gates already shut and barred.

It was hard to say whether it was for Thuggism or for turn-
ing Queen's evidence that Sullivan was to be lynched : crime
is looked at here as leniently as it is in Texas. I once met a
man who had been a coroner at one of the digging towns, who,
talking of " old times," said, quietly enough : " Oh, yes — plenty
of work ; we used to make a good deal of it. You see, I was
paid by fees, so I used generally to manage to hold four or five
inquests on each body. Awful rogues my assistants were : I
shouldn't like to have some of those men's sins to answer
for."

The Gold-Coast Police Force, which has been formed to put
a stop to Thuggism and bushranging, is a splendid body of
cavalry, about which many good stories are told. One digger
said to me : " Seen our policemen ? We don't have no younger
sons of British peers among 'em." Another account says that
none but members of the older English universities are
admitted to the force.

There are here, upon the diggings, many military men and
university graduates, who generally retain their polish of man-
ner, though, outwardly, they are often the roughest of the rough.
Some of them tell strange stories. One Cambridge man, who
was acting as a post-office clerk (not at Hokitika), told me
that in 1862, shortly after taking his degree, he went out to
British Columbia to settle upon land. He soon spent his
capital at billiards in Victoria City, and went as a digger to the
Frazer River. There he made a " pile," which he gambled

. n.} HOKITIKA. 239

away on hw road back, and he struggled through the winter of
1863-4 by shooting and selling game. In 1864, he was
attached as a hunter to the Vancouver's Exploring Expedition,
and in 1865 started with a small sum of money for Australia.
He was wrecked, lost all he had, and was forced to work his
passage down to Melbourne. From there he went into South
Australia as the driver of a reaping-machine, and was finally,
through the efforts of his friends in England, appointed to a
post-office clerkship in New Zealand, which colony he intended
to quit for California or Chili. This was not the only man of
education whom I myself found upon the diggings, as I met
with a Christchurch man, who, however, had left Oxford with-
out a degree, actually working as a digger in a surface mine.

In the outskirts of Hokitika, I came upon a palpable Life-
Guardsman, cooking for a roadside station, with his smock
worn like a soldier's tunic, and his cap stuck on one ear in
Windsor fashion. A " squatter " from near Christchurch, who
was at The Buller selling sheep, told me that he had an
ex-captain in the Guards at work for weekly wages on his
" sheep-run," and that a neighbour had a lieutenant of Lancers
rail-splitting at his " station."

Neither the habits nor the morals of this strange community
are of the best. You never see a drunken man, but drinking
is apparently the chief occupation of that portion of the town
population which is not actually employed in digging. The
mail-coaches, which run across the island on the great new
road, and along the sands to the other mining settlements,
have singularly short stages ; made so, it would seem, for the
benefit of the keepers of the " saloons," for at every halt one
or other of the passengers is expected to " shout," or " stand,"
as it would be called at home, " drinks all round." "What'll
yer shout?" is the only question; and want of coined money
need be no hindrance, for "gold-dust is taken at the bar."
One of the favourite amusements of the diggers at Pakihi, on
the days when the store-schooner arrives from Nelson, is to fill
a bucket with champagne, and drink till they feel " comfort-
able." This done, they seat themselves in the road, with their
feet on the window-sill of the shanty, and, calling to the first
passer, ask him to drink from the bucket. If he consents —

*4o OEEATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. a.

good ; if not, up they jump, and duck his head in the wine,
which remains for the next comer.

When I left Hokitika, it was by the new road, 170 miles in
length, which crosses the Alps and the island, and connects
Christchurch, the capital of Canterbury, with the western parts
of the province. The bush between the sea and mountains is
extremely lovely. The highway is " corduroyed " with trunks
of the tree-fern, and, in the swamps, the sleepers have begun to
grow at each end, so that a close-set double row of young tree-
ferns is rising along portions of the road. The bush is densely
matted with an undergrowth of supple-jack and all kind of
creepers, but here and there one finds a grove of tree-ferns
twenty feet in height, and grown so thickly as to prevent the
existence of underwood and ground plants.

The peculiarity which makes the New Zealand west-coast
scenery the most beautiful in the world to those who like more
green than California has to show, is that here alone can you
find semi-tropical vegetation growing close up to the eternal
snows. The latitude and the great moisture of the climate
bring the long glaciers very low into the valleys; and the
absence of all true winter, coupled with the rainfall, causes the
growth of palm-like ferns upon the ice-river's very edge. The
glaciers of Mount Cook are the longest in the world, except
those at the sources of the Indus, but close about them have
been found tree-ferns of thirty and forty feet in height. It is
not till you enter the mountains that you escape the moisture
of the coast, and quit for the scenery of the Alps the scenery
of fairy-land.

Bumping and tumbling in the mail-cart through the rushing
blue -grey waters of the Taramakao, I found myself within the
mountains of the Snowy Range. In the Otira Gorge, also
known as Arthur's Pass — from Arthur Dobson, brother to the
surveyor murdered by the Thugs — six small glaciers were in
sight at once. The Rocky Mountains opposite to Denver are
loftier and not less snowy than the New Zealand Alps, but in
the Rockies there are no glaciers south of about 50° N. ; while
in New Zealand — a winterless country — they are common at
eight degrees nearer to the line. The varying amount ot
moisture has doubtless caused this difference.

341

As we journeyed through the pass, there Was one grand view
— and only one : the glimpse of the ravine to the eastward of
Mount Rollestone, caught from the desert shore of Lake Misery
— a tam near the " divide " of waters. About its banks there
grows a plant, unknown, they say, except at this lonely spot —
the Rockwood lily — a bushy plant, with a round, polished,
concave leaf, and a cup-shaped flower of virgin white, that
seems to take its tint from the encircling snows.*

In the evening, we had a view that for gloomy grandeur
cannot well be matched — that from near Bealey township, where
we struck the Waimakiriri Valley. The river-bed ia half a mile
in width, the stream itself not more than ten yards across, but,
like all New Zealand rivers, subject to freshets, which fill its
bed to a great depth with a surging, foaming flood. Some of
the victims of the Waimakiriri are buried alongside the road.
Dark evergreen bush shuts in the river-bed, and is topped on
the one side by dreary frozen peaks, and on the other by still
gloomier mountains of bare rock.

Our road, next morning, from The Cass, where we had spent
the night, lay through the eastern foot-hills and down to Can-
terbury Plains by way of Porter's Pass — a narrow track on the
top of a tremendous precipice, but soon to be changed for a
road cut along its face. The plains are one great sheep-run,
open, almost flat, and upon which you lose all sense of size.
At the mountain-foot they are covered with tall, coarse, native
grass, and are dry, like the Kansas prairie ; about Christchurch,
the English clover and English grasses have usurped the soil,
and all is fresh and green.

New Zealand is at present divided into nine semi-independent
provinces, of which three are large and powerful, and the
remainder comparatively small and poor. Six of the nine are
true States, having each its history as an independent settle-
ment ; the remaining three are creations of the Federal Govern-
ment or of the Crown.

These are not the only difficulties in the way of New
Zealand statesmen, for the provinces themselves are far from
being homogeneous units. Two of the wealthiest of all the
States, which were settled as colonies with a religious tinge—

• First grown in England in itT$»

i4i GREATER miTAItf. TCIIAP. n.

Ot-icfo, Presbyterian ; and Canterbury, Episcopalian — have been
blessed or cursed with the presence of a vast horde of diggers,
of no particular religion, and free from any reverence for things
established. Canterbury Province is not only politically
divided against itself, but geographically split in twain by the
Snowy Range, and the diggers hold the west-coast bush, the
old settlers the east-coast plain. East and west, each cries out
that the other side is robbing it. The Christchurch people say
that their money is being spent on Westland, and the Westiand
diggers cry out against the foppery and aristocratic pretence of
Christchurch. A division of the province seems inevitable,
unless, indeed, the " Centralists " gain the day, and bring about
either a closer union of the whole of the provinces, coupled
with a grant of local self-government to their sub-divisions, or
else the entire destruction of the provincial system.

The division into provinces was at one time necessary, from
the fact that the settlements were historically distinct, and
physically cut off from each other by the impenetrability of the
bush and the absence of all roads ; but the barriers are now
surmounted, and no sufficient reason can be found for keeping
up ten cabinets and ten legislatures for a population of only
200,000 souls. Such is the costliness of the provincial system
and of Maori wars, that the taxation of the New Zealanders is
nine times as heavy as that of their brother colonists in
Canada.

It is not probable that so costly and so inefficient a system
of government as that which now obtains in New Zealand can
long continue to exist. It is not only dear and bad, but
dangerous in addition ; and during my visit to Port Chalmers,
the province of Otago was loudly threatening secession. Like
all other federal constitutions, that of New Zealand fails to
provide a sufficiently strong central power to meet a divergence
of interests between the several States. The system which
failed in Greece, which failed in Germany, which failed in
America, has failed here in the antipodes ; and it may be said
that, in these days of improved communications, wherever
federation is possible, a still closer union is at least as likely to
prove lasting.

New Zealand suffers, not only by the artificial division into

provinces, but also by the physical division of the country into
two great islands, too far apart to be ever thoroughly homo-
geneous, too near together to be wholly independent of each
other. The difficulty has been hitherto increased by the
existence in the North of a powerful and warlike native race,
all but extinct in the South Island. Not only have the Southern
people no native wars, but they have no native claimants from
whom every acre for the settler must be bought, and they
naturally decline to submit to ruinous taxation to purchase
Parewanui from, or to defend Taranaki against, the Maories.
Having been thwarted by the Home Government in the agita-
tion for the " separation " of the islands, the Southern people
now aim at " Ultra-Provincialism," declaring for a system under
which the provinces would virtually be independent colonies,
connected only by a confederation of the loosest kind.

The jealousies of the great towns, here as in Italy, have
much bearing upon the political situation. Auckland is for
separation, because in that event it would of necessity become
the seat of the government of the North Island. In the South,
Christchurch and Dunedin have similar claims; and each of
them, ignoring the other, begs for separation in the hope of
becoming the Southern capital. Wellington and Nelson alone
are for the continuance of the federation — Wellington because
it is already the capital, and Nelson because it is intriguing to
supplant its neighbour. Although the difficulties of the moment
mainly arise out of the war expenditure, and will terminate with
the extinction of the Maori race, her geographical shape almost
forbids us to hope that New Zealand will ever form a single
country under a strong central government.

To obtain an adequate idea of the difficulty of his task, a
new governor, on landing in New Zealand, could not do better
than cross the Southern Island. On the west side of the
mountains, he would find a restless digger-democracy, likely to
be succeeded in the future by small manufacturers, and spade-
farmers growing root-crops upon small holdings of fertile loam ;
on the east, gentlemen sheep-farmers, holding their twenty
thousand acres each : supporters by their position of the exist-
ing state of things, or of an aristocratic republic, in which men
of their own caste would rule.

R 2

244 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. n.

Christchurcli— Episcopalian, dignified— the first settlement
in the province, and still the capital, affects to despise Hokitika,
already more wealthy and more populous. Christchurch im-
ports English rooks to caw in the elm-trees of her cathedral-
close ; Hokitika imports men. Christchurch has not fallen
away from her traditions; every street is named from an
English bishopric, and the society is that of an English country
town.

Returning northward, along the cost, in the shade of the
cold and gloomy mountains of the Kaikoura Range, I found at
Wellington two invitations awaiting me to be present at great
gatherings of the native tribes.

The next day, I started for the Manawatu River and Pare-
wanui I'ah.

24*

CHAPTER IIL

POLYNESIANS.

THE name "Maori" is said to mean "native," but the boast
on the part of the Maori race contained in the title " Natives
of the Soil " is one which conflicts with their traditions. These
make them out to be mere interlopers — Tahitians, they them-
selves say — who, within historic ages, sailed down island by
island in their war-canoes, massacring the inhabitants, and,
finally landing in New Zealand, found a numerous horde of
blacks of the Australian race living in the forests of the South
Island. Favoured by a year of exceptional drought, they set
fire to the woods, and burnt to the last man, or "drove into the
sea, the aboriginal possessors of the soil. Some ethnologists
believe that this account is in the main correct, but hold that
the Maori race is Malay, and not originally Tahitian : others
have tried to show that the conflict between blacks and browns
was not confined to these two islands, but raged throughout the
whole of Polynesia ; and that it was terminated in New Zealand
itself, not by the destruction of the blacks, but by the amalga-
mation of the opposing races.

The legends allege war as the cause for the flight to New
Zealand. The accounts of some of the migrations are circum-
stantial in the extreme, and describe the first planting of the
yams, the astonishment of the people at the new flowers and
trees of the islands, and many such details of the landing. The
names of the chiefs and of the canoes are given in a sort of
" catalogue of ships," and the wars of the settlers are narrated
at length, with the heroic exaggeration common to the legends
pf all lands.

The canoe fleet reached New Zealand in the fifteenth century,

a46 ' GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. ra.

it is believed, and the people landed chanting a chorus-speech,
which is still preserved :

" We come at last to this fair land — a resting-place ;
Spirit of the Earth, to thee, we, coming from afar, present our hearts
for food."

That the Maories are Polynesians there can be no doubt : a
bird with them is " manu," a fish " ika " (the Greek ix#i>s, become
with the digamma " piscis " and " poisson ;" and connected with
"fisch," and "fish"), as they are throughout the Malayan archi-
pelago and Polynesian isles ; the Maori " atua," a god, is the
" hotua " of the Friendly Islanders ; the " wahres," or native
huts, are identical in all the islands ; the names of the chief
deities are the same throughout Polynesia, and the practice of
tattooing, the custom of carving grotesque squatting figures on
tombs, canoes, and " pahs," and that of tabooing things, places,
times, and persons, prevail from Hawaii to Stewart Land, though
not everywhere so strictly read as in the Tonga isles, where the
very ducks are muzzled to keep them from disturbing by their
quacking the sacred stillness of " tapd time."

Polynesian traditions mostly point to the Malay peninsula as
the cradle of the race, and the personal resemblance of the
Maories to the Malays is very strong, except in the setting of
the eyes ; while the figures on the gate-posts of the New Zealand
pahs have eyes more oblique than are now found among the
Maori people. Strangely enough, the New Zealand " pah " is
identical with the Burmese stockade, but the word " pah "
stands both for the palisade and for the village of wahres which
it contains. The Polynesian and Malay tongues have not
much in common ; but that variations of language sufficiently
great to leave no apparent tie spring up in a few centuries,
cannot be denied by us who know for certain that " visible "
and " optician " come from a common root, and can trace the
steps through which "jour" is derived from " dies."

The tradition of the Polynesians is that they came from
Paradise, which they place, in the southern islands, to the
north ; in the northern islands, to the westward. This legend
indicates a migration from Asia to the northern islands, and
thence southwards to New Zealand, and accounts for the

CHAP. m.J POLYNESIANS. 147

non-colonization of Australia by the Polynesians. The sea be-
tween New Zealand and Australia is too rough and wide to
be traversed by canoes, and the wind-chart shows that the track
of the Malays must have been eastwards along the equatorial
belt of calms, and then back to the south-west with the south-
east trade-wind right abeam to their canoes.

The wanderings of the Polynesian race were, probably, not
confined to the Pacific. Ethnology is as yet in its infancy : we
know nothing of the Todas of the Neilgherries ; we ask in vain
who are the Gonds ; we are in doubt about the Japanese ; we
are lost in perplexity as to who we may be ourselves ; but there
is at least as much ground for the statement that the Red Indians
are Malays as for the assertion that we are Saxons.

The resemblances between the Red Indians and the Pacific
Islanders are innumerable. Strachey's account of the Indians
of Virginia, written in 1612, needs but a change in the names
to fit the Maories : Powhdtan's house is that of William Thomp-
son;— cannibalism prevailed in Brazil and along the Pacific
coast of North America at the time of their discovery, and even
the Indians of Chili ate many an early navigator ; the abori-
gines of Vancouver Island are tattooed ; their canoes resemble
those of the Malays, and the mode of paddling is the same from
New Zealand to Hudson's Bay — from Florida to Singapore.
Jade ornaments of the shape of the Maori " Heitiki " (the charm
worn about the neck) have been found by the French in Guada-
lupe ; the giant masonry of Central America is similar to that
of Cambodia and Siam. Small-legged squatting figures, like
those of the idols of China and Japan, not only surmount the
gate-posts of the New Zealand pahs, but are found eastwards to
Honduras, westwards to Burmah, to Tartary and to Ceylon.
The fibre mats, common to Polynesia and Red India, are un-
known to savages elsewhere, and the feather head-dresses of the
Maories are identical with those of the Delawares or Hurons.

In the Indians of America and of Polynesia there is the
same hatred of continued toil, and the same readiness to engage
in violent exertion for a time. Superstition and witchcraft are
common to all untaught peoples, but in the Malays arid red
men they take similar shapes ; and the Indians of Mexico and
Peru had, like all the Polynesians, a sacred language, understood

J4« GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP, m,

only by the priests. The American altars were one with the
temples of the Pacific, and were not confined to Mexico, for
they form the " mounds " of Ohio and Illinois. There is great
likeness between the legend of Maui, the Maori hero, and that
of Hiawatha, especially in the history of how the sun was noosed,
and made to move more slowly through the skies, so as to give
men long days for toil. The resemblance of the Maori "run-
anga," or assembly for debate, to the Indian council is extremely
close, and throughout America and Polynesia a singular blending
of poetry and ferocity is characteristic of the Malays.

In colour, the Indians and Polynesians are not alike; but
colour does not seem to be, ethnologically speaking, of much
account. The Hindoos of Calcutta have the same features as
those of Delhi ; but the former are black, the latter brown, or,
if high-caste men, almost white. Exposure to sun, in a damp,
hot climate, seems to blacken every race that it does not de-
stroy. The races that it will finally destroy, tropical heat first
whitens. The English planters of Mississippi and Florida are
extremely dark, yet there is not a suspicion of black blood in
their veins : it is the white blood of the slaves to which the
Abolitionists refer in their philippics. The Jews at Bombay
and Aden are of a deep brown ; in Morocco they are swarthy ;
in England, nearly white.

Religious rites and social customs outlast both physical type
and language ; but even were it otherwise, there is great resem-
blance in build and feature between the Polynesians and many
of the " Red-Indian " tribes. The aboriginal people of New
York State are described by the early navigators not as tall,
grave, hooked-nose men, but as copper-coloured, pleasant-
looking, and with quick, shrewd eyes ; and the Mexican Indian
bears more likeness to the Sandwich Islander than to the Dela-
ware or Cherokee.

In reaching South America, there were no distances to be
overcome such as to present insurmountable difficulties to the
Malays. Their canoes have frequently, within the years that
we have had our missionary stations in the islands, made invo-
luntary voyages of six or seven hundred miles. A Western
editor has said of Columbus that he deserves no praise for dis-
covering America, as it is so large that he could not well

. ill.] POLYNESIANS. 249

missed it ; but Easter Island is so small, that the chances must
have been thousands to one against its being reached by canoes
sailing even from the nearest land ; yet it is an ascertained fact
that Easter Island was peopled by the Polynesians. Whatever
drove canoes to Easter Island would have driven them from
the island to Chili and Peru. The Polynesian Malays would
sometimes be taken out to sea by sudden storms, by war, by
hunger, by love of change. In war-time, whole tribes have,
within historic days, been clapped into their boats, and sent to
sea by a merciful conqueror who had dined : this occurs, how-
ever, only when the market is already surfeited with human
joints.

In sailing from America to New Zealand, we met strong
westerly winds before we had gone half-way across the seas,
and, south of the trade-wind region, these blow constantly to
within a short distance of the American coast, where they are
lost upon the edge of the Chilian current. A canoe blown off
from the southern islands, and running steadily before the wind,
would be cast on the Peruvian coast near Quito.

When Columbus landed in the Atlantic islands, he was,
perhaps, not mistaken in his belief that it was " The Indies "
that he had found — an India peopled by the Malay race, till
lately the most widely-scattered of all the nations of the world,
but one which the English seem destined to supplant.

The Maories, without doubt, were originally Malays, emi-
grants from the winterless climate of the Malay peninsula and
Polynesian archipelago; and, although the northernmost portions
of New Zealand suited them not ill, the cold winters of the
South Island prevented the spread of the bands they planted
there. At all times it has been remarked by ethnologists and
acclimatizers that it is easier by far to carry men and beasts
from the poles towards the tropics than from the tropics to the
colder regions. The Malays, in coming to New Zealand, un-
knowingly broke one of Nature's laws, and their descendants
are paying the penalty in

250 (1REATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. IT.

CHAPTER IV.
PAREWANUI PAH.

*' HERE is Petaton6.
This is the loth of December ;
The sun shines, and the birds sing ;
Clear is the water in rivers and streams ;
Bright is the sky, and the sun is high in the air.
This is the loth of December ;
But where is the money ?

Three years has this matter in many debates been discussed,
And here at last is Petatone ;
But where is the money ?"

A BAND of Maori women, slowly chanting in a high, strained
key, stood at the gate of a pah, and met with this song a few
Englishmen who were driving rapidly on to their land.

Our track lay through a swamp of the New Zealand flax.
Huge sword-like leaves and giant flower-stalks all but hid from
view the Maori stockades. To the left was a village of low
wahres, fenced round with a double row of lofty posts, carved
with rude images of gods and men, and having posterns here
and there. On the right were groves of karakas, children of
Tanemahuta, the New Zealand sacred trees — under their shade,
on a hill, a camp and another and larger pah. In startling
contrast to the dense masses of the oily leaves, there stretched
a great extent of light-green sward, where there were other
camps and a tall flag-staff, from which floated the white flag
and the Union Jack, emblems of British sovereignty and
peace.

A thousand kilted Maories dotted the green landscape with
patches of brilliant tartans and scarlet cloth. Women loungeu

CHAP, nr.] PAREWANUl PAH. a$l

about, whiling away the time with dance and song ; and from
all the corners of the glade the soft cadence of the Maori cry
of welcome came floating to us on the breeze, sweet as the
sound of distant bells.

As we drove quickly on, we found ourselves in the midst of a
thronging crowd of square-built men, brown in colour, and for
the most part not much darker than Spaniards, but with here
and there a woolly negro in their ranks. Glancing at them as
we were hurried past, we saw that the men were robust, well
limbed, and tall. They greeted us pleasantly with many a
cheerful, open smile, but the faces of the older people were
horribly tattooed in spiral curves. The chiefs carried battle-
clubs of jade and bone ; the women wore strange ornaments.
At the flag-staff we pulled up, and, while the preliminaries of
the council were arranged, had time to discuss with Maori and
with " Pakeha " (white man) the questions that had brought us
thither.

The purchase of an enormous block of land — that of the
Manawatu — had long been an object wished for and worked
for by the Provincial Government of Wellington. The com-
pletion of the sale it was that had brought the Superintendent,
Dr. Featherston, and humbler Pakehas to Parewanui Pah. It
was not only that the land was wanted by way of room for the
flood of settlers, but purchase by Government was, moreover,
the only means whereby war between the various native
claimants of the land could be prevented. The Pake'ha and
Maori had agreed upon a price ; the question that remained
for settlement was how the money should be shared. One
tribe had owned the land from the earliest times ; another had
conquered some miles of it ; a third had had one of its chiefs
cooked and eaten upon the ground. In the eye of the Maori
law, the last of these titles was the best : the blood of a chief
overrides all mere historic claims. The two strongest human
motives concurred to make war probable, for avarice and
jealousy alike prevented agreement as to the division of the
spoil. Each of the three tribes claiming had half-a-dozen allied
and related nations upon the ground ; every man was theic
who had a claim direct or indirect, or thought he had, to any
portion of the block. Individual ownership and tribal owner-

jjj GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. IT.

ship conflicted. The Ngatiapa were well armed; the Nga-
tiraukawa had their rifles ; the Wanganuis had sent for theirs.
The greatest tact on the part of Dr. Featherston was needed to
prevent a fight such as would have roused New Zealand from
Auckland to Port Nicholson.

On a signal from the Superintendent, the heralds went round
the camps and pahs to call the tribes to council. The summons
was a long-drawn, minor-descending-scale : a plaintive cadence,
which at a distance blends into a bell-like chord. The words
mean : " Come hither ! Come hither ! Come ! come ! Mao-

ries ! Come !" and men, women, and children soon came

thronging in from every side, the chiefs bearing sceptres and
spears of ceremony, and their women wearing round their
necks the symbol of nobility, the Heitiki, or greenstone god.
These images, we were told, have pedigrees, and names like
those of men.

We, with the resident magistrate of Wanganui, seated our-
selves beneath the flag-staff. A chief, meeting the people as
they came up, stayed them with the gesture that Homer
ascribes to Hector, and bade them sit in a huge circle round
the spar.

No sooner were we seated on our mat than there ran slowly
into the centre of the ring a plumed and kilted chief, with
sparkling eyes, the perfection of a savage. Halting suddenly,
he raised himself upon his toes, frowned, and stood brandishing
his short feathered spear. It was Hunia te Hake'ke, the young
chief of the Ngatiapa.

Throwing off his plaid, he commenced to speak, springing
hither and thither with leopard-like freedom of gait, and some-
times leaping high into the air to emphasize a word. Fierce as
were the gestures, his speech was conciliatory, and the Maori
flowed from his lips — a soft Tuscan tongue. As, with a move-
ment full of vigorous grace, he sprang back to the ranks to
take his seat, there ran round the ring a hum and buzz of
popular applause.

" Governor" Hunia was followed by a young Wanganui
chief, who wore hunting-breeches and high boots, and a long
black mantle over his European clothes. There was something
odd in the shape of the cloak ; and when we came to ]pok

CHA?. rv.] PA&EWJLXU1 PAHt 25 j

closely at it, we found that it was the skirt of the riding-habit
of his half-caste wife. The great chiefs paid so little heed to
this flippant fellow, as to stand up and harangue their tribes
in the middle of his speech, which came thus to an untimely
end.

A funny old grey-beard, Waitere Maru Maru, next rose, and,
smothering down the jocularity of his face, turned towards us
for a moment the typical head of Peter, as you see it on the
windows of every modern church — for a moment only ; for, as
he raised his hand to wave his tribal sceptre, his apostolic
drapery began to slip from off his shoulders, and he had to
clutch at it with the energy of a topman taking-in a reef in a
whole gale. His speech was full of Nestorian proverbs and
wise saws, but he wandered off into a history of the Wanganui
lands, by which he soon became as wearied as we ourselves
were ; for he stopped short, and, with a twinkle of the eye,
said : " Ah ! Waitere is no longer young : he is climbing the
snow-clad mountain Ruahine' ; he is becoming an old man ;"
and down he sat.

Karanama, a small Ngatiraukawa chief with a white mous-
tache, who looked like an old French concierge, followed
Maru Maru, and, with much use of his sceptre, related a dream
foretelling the happy issue of the negotiations ; for the little
man was one of those " dreamers of dreams " against whom
Moses warned the Israelites.

Karanama's was not the only trance and vision of which we
heard in the course of these debates. The Maories believe
that in their dreams the seers hear great bands of spirits sing-
ing chants : these when they wake the prophets reveal to all
the people ; but it is remarked that the vision is generally to
the advantage of the seer's tribe.

Karanama's speech was answered by the head-chief of the
Rangitane Maories, Te Peeti Td Awe Awe', who, throwing off
his upper clothing as he warmed to his subject, and strutting
pompously round and round the ring, challenged Karanama to
immediate battle, or his tribe to general encounter; but he
cooled down as he went on, and in his last sentence showed us
that Maori oratory, however ornate usually, can be made ex-
tremely terse. " It is hot," he said — " it is hot, and the very

254 G&EATE& B&MAW.

birds are loath to sing. We have talked for a week, and are
therefore dry. Let us take our share — ;£ 10,000, or whatever
we can get — and then we shall be dry no more."

The Maori custom of walking about, dancing, leaping, un-
dressing, running, and brandishing spears during the delivery
of a speech is convenient for all parties : to the speaker, be-
cause it gives him time to think of what he shall say next ; to
the listener, because it allows him to weigh the speaker's words :
to the European hearer, because it permits the interpreter tc
keep pace with the orator without an effort. On this occasion,
the resident magistrate of Wanganui — Mr. Buller, a Maoii
scholar of eminence, and the attached friend of some of the
chiefs — interpreted for Dr. Featherston ; and we were allowed
to lean over him in such a way as to hear every word that
passed. That the able Superintendent of Wellington — the
great protector of the Maories, the man to whom they look as
to Queen Victoria's second in command, should be wholly
dependent upon interpreters, however skilled, seems almost
too singular to be believed ; but it is possible that Dr. Feather-
ston may find in pretended want of knowledge much advantage
to the Government. He is able to collect his thoughts before
he replies to a difficult question ; he can allow an epithet to
escape his notice in the filter of translation ; he can listen and
speak with greater dignity.

The day was wearing on before Te Peeti's speech was done,
and, as the Maories say, our waistbands began to slip down
low ; so all now went to lunch, both Maori and Pakeha, they
sitting in circles, each with his bowl, or flax-blade dish, and
wooden spoon, we having a table and a chair or two in the
Mission-house ; but we were so tempted by Hori Kingi's *
whitebait that we begged some of him as we passed. The
Maories boil the little fish in milk, and flavour them with leeks.
Great fish, meat, vegetables, almost all they eat, in short, save
whitebait, is " steamed " in the underground native oven. A
hole is dug, and filled with wood, and stones are piled upon
the wood, a small opening being left for draught While the
wood is burning, the stones become red-hot, and fall through
into the hole. They are then covered with damp fern, or else

* Hori Kingi te" Anansia died on the i8th of September, 1868.

CTUf. rv.J PAIiEWANUl PAH. 155

with wet mats of flax, plaited at the moment ; the meat is put
in, and covered with more mats ; the whole is sprinkled with
water, and then earth is heaped on till the vapour ceases to
escape. The joint takes about an hour, and is delicious. Fish
is wrapped in a kind of dock-leaf, and so steamed.

While the men's eating was thus going on, many of the
women stood idly round, and we were enabled to judge of
Maori beauty. A profusion of long, crisp curls, a short black
pipe thrust between stained lips, a pair of black eyes gleaming
from a tattooed face, denote the Maori belle, who wears for her
only robe a long bedgown of dirty calico, but whose ears and
neck are tricked out with greenstone ornaments, the signs of
birth and wealth. Here and there you find a girl with long,
smooth tresses, and almond-shaped black eyes : these charms
often go along with prominent, thin features, and suggest at
once the Jewess and the gipsy girl. The women smoke con-
tinually ; the men not much.

When at four o'clock we returned to the flag-staff, we found
that the temperature, which during the morning had been too
hot, had become that of a fine English June — the air light, the
trees and grass lit by a gleaming yellow sunshine that reminded
me of the Californian haze.

During luncheon we had heard that Dr. Featherston's pro-
posals as to the division of the purchase-money had been
accepted by the Ngatiapa, but not by Hunia himself, whose
vanity would brook no scheme not of his own conception. We
were no sooner returned to the ring than he burst in upon us
with a defiant speech. " Unjust," he declared, " as was the
proposition of great ' Pe'tatone' ' (Featherston), he would have
accepted it for the sake of peace had he been allowed to divide
the tribal share ; but as the Wanganuis insisted on having a
third of his ^15,000, and as Pe'tatone' seemed to support them
in their claim, he should have nothing more to do with the
sale." "The Wanganuis claim as our relatives," he said:
" verily, the pumpkin-shoots spread far."

Karanama, the seer, stood up to answer Hunia, and began
his speech in a tone of ridicule. " Hunia is like the ti-tree :
if you cut him down he sprouts again." Hunia sat quietly
through a good deal of this kind of wit, till at last some epithet

2$ 6 Q&tiAtEit Bit I TAIN

provoked him to interrupt the speaker. " What a fine fellow
you are, Karanama ; you'll tell us soon that you've two pair ol
legs." " Sit down !" shrieked Karanama, and a word-war en-
sued, but the abuse was too full of native raciness and vigour
to be fit for English ears. The chiefs kept dancing round the
ring, threatening each other with their spears. " Why do not
you hurl at me, Karanama?" said Hunia; "it is easier to parry
spears than lies." At last Hunia sat down.

Karanama, feinting and making at him with his spear, re
preached Hunia with a serious flaw in his pedigree — a blot
which is said to account for Hunia's hatred to the Ngatiraukawa,
to whom his mother was for years a slave. Hunia, without
rising from the ground, shrieked " Liar !" Karanama again
spoke the obnoxious word. Springing from the ground, Hunia
snatched his spear from where it stood, and ran at his enemy
as though to strike him. Karanama stood stock-still. Coming
up to him at a charge, Hunia suddenly stopped, raised himself
on tiptoe, shaking his spear, and flung out some contemptuous
epithet ; then turned, and stalked slowly, with a springing gait,
back to his own corner of the ring. There he stood, harangu-
ing his people in a bitter undertone. Karanama did the like
with his. The interpreters could not keep pace with what was
said. We understood that the chiefs were calling each upon
his tribe to support him, if need were, in war. After a few
minutes of this pause, they wheeled round, as though by a
common impulse, and again began to pour out torrents of
abuse. The applause became frequent, hums quickened into
shouts, cheer followed cheer, till at last the ring was alive with
men and women springing from the ground, and crying out on
the opposing leader for a dastard.

We had previously been told to have no fear that resort
would be had to blows. The Maories never fight upon a
sudden quarrel : war is with them a solemn act, entered upon
only after much deliberation. Those of us who were strangers
to New Zealand were nevertheless not without our doubts,
while for half an hour we lay upon the grass watching the armed
champions running round the ring, challenging sach other to
mortal combat on the spot.

The chieftains at last became exhausted, and the Mission-

CHAP. nr.J PAREWANUI PAH. »57

bell beginning to toll for evening chapel, Hunia broke off
in the middle of his abuse : " Ah ! I hear the bell ! " and
turning, stalked out of the ring towards his pah, leaving it to be
inferred, by those who did not know him, that he was going
to attend the service. The meeting broke up in confusion,
and the Upper Wanganui tribes at once began their march
towards the mountains, leaving behind them only a delegation
of their chiefs.

As we drove down to the coast, we talked over the close
resemblance of the Maori runanga to the Homeric council ; it
had struck us all. Here, as in the Greek camp, we had the
ring of people, into which advanced the lance-bearing or
sceptre-wearing chiefs, they alone speaking, and the people
backing them only by a hum : " The block of wood dictates not
to the carver, neither the people to their chiefs," is a Maori
proverb. The boasting of ancestry, and bragging of deeds and
military exploits, to which modern wind-bags would only
casually allude, was also thoroughly Homeric. In Hunia we
had our Achilles ; the retreat of Hunia to his wahre was that
of Achilles to his tent ; the cause of quarrel alone was different,
though in both cases it arose out of the division of spoil, in the
one case the result of lucky wars, in the other of the Pake'ha's
weakness. The Argive and Maori leaders are one in fire,
figure, port, and mien ; alike, too, even in their sulkiness. In
Waiter^ and Aperahama Tipai we had two Nestors ; our Ther-
sites was Porea, the jester, a half-mad buffoon, continually
mimicking the chiefs or interrupting them, and being by them
or their messengers as often kicked and cuffed. In the fre-
quency of repetition, the use of proverbs and of simile, the
Maories resemble not Homer's Greeks so much as Homer's
self; but the calling together of the people by the heralds, the
secret conclave of the chiefs, the feast, the conduct of the
assembly — all were the exact repetition of the events recorded
in the first and second books of the " Iliad " as having happened
on the Trojan Plains. The single point of difference was not
in favour of the Greeks : the Maori women took their place in
council with the men.

As we drove home, a storm came on, and hung about the
coast so long, that it was not till near eleven at night that we

358 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. iv.

were able to take our swim in the heated waters of the Ma-
nawatu river, and frighten off every duck and heron in the
district.

In the morning, we rose to alarming news. Upon the
pretext of the presence in the neighbourhood, of the Hau-Hau
chief Wi Hapi, with a war party of 200 men, the unarmed
Parewanui natives had sent to Wanganui for their guns, and it
was only by a conciliatory speech at the midnight runanga that
Mr. Buller had succeeded in preventing a complete break-up
of all the camps, if not an intertribal war. There seemed to be
white men behind the scenes who were not friendly to the sale,
and the debate had lasted from dark till dawn.

While we were at breakfast, a Ngatiapa officer of the native
contingent brought down a letter to Dr. Featherston from
Hunia and Hori Kingi, calling us to a general meeting of the
tribes convened for noon, to be held in the Ngatiapa Pah. The
letter was addressed, " Kia te Petatone' td Huperinte'nd " — " To
the Featherston, the Superintendent " — the alterations in the
chief words being made to bring them within the grasp of
Maori tongues, which cannot sound fs, t/i's, nor sibilants of
any kind. The absence of harsh sounds, and the rule which
makes every word end with a vowel, give a peculiar softness
and charm to the Maori language. Sugar becomes huka ;
scissors, hikiri ; sheep, hipi ; and so with all English words
adopted into Maori. The rendering of the Hebrew names of
the Old Testament is often singular : Genesis becomes
Kenehi ; Exodus is altered into Ekoruhe ; Leviticus is hardly
recognisable in Rewitikuha ; Tiuteronomi reads strangely for
Deuteronomy, and Hohua for Joshua ; Jacob, Isaac, Moses,
become Hakopa, Ihaka, and Mohi; Egypt is softened into
Ihipa, Jordan into Horaino. The list of the nations of
Canaan seems to have been a stumbling-block in the mis-
sionaries' way. The success obtained with Girgashites has not
been great ; it stands Kirekah ; Gaash is transmuted into
Kaaha, and Eleazar into Ereatara.

When we drove on to the ground, all was at a dead-lock —
the flag-staff bare, the chiefs sleeping in their wahre's, and the
common folk whiling away the hours with haka songs. Dr.
Featherston retired from .the ground, declaring that till the

CHAI . iv.] PAREWANUI PAH. 259

Queen's flag was hoisted he would attend no debate ; but he
permitted us to wander in among the Maories.

We were introduced to Tamiana t^ Rauparaha, chief of the
Ngatitoa branch of the Ngatiraukawa, and son of the great
cannibal chief of the same name who murdered Captain Wake-
field. Old Rauparaha it was who hired an English ship to
carry him and his nation to the South Island, where they ate
several tribes, boiling the chiefs, by the captain's consent, in the
ship's coppers, and salting down for future use the common
people. When the captain, on return to port, claimed his price,
Rauparaha told him to go about his business, or he should be
salted too. The captain took the hint, but he did not escape
for long, as he was finally eaten by the Sandwich Islanders in
Hawaii.

In answer to our request for a dance-song, Tamiana and
Horomona Toremi replied through an interpreter that " the
hands of the singers should beat time as fast as the pinions of
the wild duck ;" and in a minute we were in the middle of an
animated crowd of boys and women collected by Porea, the
buffoon.

As soon as the singers had squatted upon the grass, the
jester began to run slowly up and down between their ranks
as they sat swinging backwards and forwards in regular time,
groaning in chorus, and looking upwards with distorted faces.

In a second dance, a girl standing out upon the grass chanted
the air — a kind of capstan song — and then the " dancers," who
were seated in one long row, joined in chorus, breathing
violently in perfect time, half forming words, but not notes,
swinging from side to side like the howling dervishes, and using
frightful gestures. This strange whisper-roaring went on in-
creasing in rapidity and fierceness, till at last the singers
worked themselves into a frenzy, in which they rolled their
eyes, stiffened the arms and legs, clutched and clawed with the
fingers, and snorted like maddened horses. Stripping off their
clothes, they looked more like the Maories of thirty years ago
than those who see them only at the mission-stations would
believe. Other song-dances, in which the singers stood
striking their heels at measured intervals upon the earth, were
taken up with equal vigour by the boys and women, the grown

s 2

360 GREATER BRITAIN. [CMAP. rv.

men in their dignity keeping themselves aloof, although in his
heart every Maori loves mimetic dance and song. We remarked
that in the " haka " the old women seemed more in earnest than
the young, who were always bursting into laughter, and forget-
ting words and time.

The savage love for semitones makes Maori music somewhat
wearisome to the English ear ; so after a time we began to walk
through the pahs and sketch the Maories, to their great delight.
I was drawing the grand old head of a venerable dame — •
Oriuhia t6 Aka — when she asked to see what I was about. As
soon as I showed her the sketch, she began to call me names,
and from her gestures I saw that the insult was in the omission
of the tattooing on her chin. When I inserted the stripes and
curves, her delight was such that I greatly feared she would
have embraced me.

Strolling into the karaka groves, we came upon a Maori
wooden tomb, of which the front was carved with figures three
feet high, grotesque and obscene. Gigantic eyes, hands bearing
clubs, limbs without bodies, and bodies without limbs, were
figured here and there among more perfect carvings, and the
whole was of a character which the Maories of to-day disown,
as they do cannibalism, wishing to have these horrid things for-
gotten. The sudden rise of the Hau-Hau fanaticism within
the last few years has shown us that the layer of civilization by
which the old Maori habits are overlaid is thin indeed.

The flags remained down all day, and in the afternoon we
returned to the coast to shoot duck and pukeko, a sort of
moor-hen of the size and colour of a black-cock. It was not
easy work, for the birds fell in the flax-swamp, and the giant
sword-like leaves of the Phormium tenax cut our hands as we
pushed our way through its dense clumps and bushes, while
some of the party suffered badly from the sun : Maui, the
Maories say, must have chained him up too near the earth.
After dark, we could see the glare of the fires in the karaka
groves, where the Maories were in council, and a Government
surveyor came in to report that he had met the dissentient
Wanganuis riding fast towards the hills.

In the morning, we were allowed to stay upon the coast till
ten or eleven o'clock, when a messenger came down from Mr.

OIIAP. iv.] PAREWANUI PAH. 261

Buller to call us to the pah : the council of the chiefs had again
sat all night — for the Maories act upon their proverb that the
eyes of great chiefs should know no rest — and Hunia had
carried everything before him in the debate.

As soon as the ring was formed, Hunia apologi/ed for the
pulling down of the Queen's flag ; it had been done, he said,
as a sign that the sale was broken off, not as an act of dis-
respect. Having, in short, had things entirely his own way,
he was disposed to be extremely friendly both to whites and
Maories. The sale, he said, must be brought about, or the
"world would be on fire with an intertribal war. What is the
good of the mountain-land ? There is nothing to eat but
stones ; granite is a hard but not a strengthening food ; and
women and land are the ruin of men."

After congratulatory speeches from other chiefs, some of the
older men treated us to histories of the deeds that had been
wrought upon the block of land. Some of their speeches —
notably those of Aperahama and Ihakara — were largely built
up of legendary poems ; but the orators quoted the poetry as
such only when in doubt how far the sentiments were those of
the assembled people : when they were backed by the hum
which denotes applause, they at once commenced with singular
art to weave the poetry into that which was their own.

As soon as the speeches were over, Hunia and Ihakara
marched up to the flag-staff carrying between them the deed-
of-sale. Putting it down before Dr. Featherston, they shook
hands with each other and with him, and swore that for the
future there should be eternal friendship between their tribes.
The deed was then signed by many hundred men and women,
and Dr. Featherston started with Captain td Ke'pa,* of the
native contingent, to fetch the ,£2 5,000 from Wanganui town,
the Maories firing their rifles into the air as a salute.

The Superintendent was no sooner gone than a kind of
solemn grief seemed to come over the assembled people.
After all, they were selling the graves of their ancestors, they
argued. The wife of Hamuera, seizing her husband's green-
stone club, ran out from the ranks of the women, and began to

* Wounded at the defence of Okutuku, against the escaped Ilau-Haus,
7th of November, 1868.

262 GREATER BRTTAIN. [CHAP, iv.

intone an impromptu song, which was echoed by the women,
in a pathetic chorus-chant : —

" The sun shines, but we quit our land ; we abandon for ever its forests,
its mountains, its groves, its lakes, its shores.

All its fair fisheries, here, under the bright sun, for ever we renounce.

It is a lovely day ; fair will be the children that are born to-day ; but
we quit our land.

In some parts there is foiest ; in others, the ground is skimmed orer
by the birds in their flight.

Upon the trees there is fruit ; in the streams, fish ; in the fields, pota-
toes ; fern-roots in the bush ; but we quit our land."

It is in chorus-speeches of this kind that David's psalms must
have been recited by the Jews ; but on this occasion there was
a good deal of mere acting in the grief, for the tribes had never
occupied the land that they now sold.

The next day, Dr. Featherston drove into camp surrounded
by a brilliant cavalcade of Maori cavalry, amid much yelling
and firing of pieces skywards. Hunia, in receiving him, de-
clared that he would not have the money paid till the morrow,
as the sun must shine upon the transfer of the lands. It
would take his people all the night, he said, to work themselves
up to the right pitch for a war-dance; so he sent down a
strong guard to watch the money-chests, which had been con-
veyed to the missionary hut. The Ngatiapa sentry posted
inside the room was an odd cross between savagery and civi-
lization ; he wore the cap of the native contingent, and nothing
else but a red kilt. He was armed with a short Wilkinson
rifle, for which he had, however, not a round of ammunition,
his cartridges being Enfield and his piece unloaded. Bar-
barian or not, he seemed to like raw gin, with which some
Englishman had unlawfully and unfairly tempted him.

In the morning, the money was handed over in the runanga-
house, and a signet-ring presented to Hunia by Dr. Featherston
in pledge of peace, and memory of the sale ; but owing to the
heat, we soon adjourned to the karaka grove, where Hunia
made a congratulatory and somewhat boastful speech, offering
his friendship and alliance to Dr. Featherston.

The assembly was soon dismissed, and the chiefs withdrew
to prepare for the grandest war-dance that had been seen for

CHAP, iv.] PASS WAX UI PAfl. 263

years, while a party went off to catch and kill the oxen that
were to be " steamed " whole, just as our friends' fathers would
have steamed us.

A chief was detached by Hunia to guide us to a hill whence
we commanded the whole glade. No sooner had we taken
our seats than the Ngatiraukawa to the number of a hundred
fighting-men, armed with spears, and led by a dozen women
bearing clubs, marched out from their camp, and formed in
column, their chiefs making speeches of exhortation from the
ranks. After a pause, we heard the measured groaning of a
distant haka, and, looking up the glade, at the distance of a
mile saw some two score Wanganui warriors jumping in per-
fect time, now to one side, now to the other, grasping their
rifles by the barrel, and raising them as one man each time
they jumped. Presently, bending one knee, but stiffening the
other leg, they advanced, stepping together with a hopping
movement, slapping their hips and thighs, and shouting from
the palate, " Hough ! Hough !" with fearful emphasis.

A shout from the Ngatiraukawa hailed the approach of the
Ngatiapa, who deployed from the woods some two hundred
strong, all armed with Enfield rifles. They united with the
Wanganuis, and marched slowly down with their rifles at the
" charge," steadily singing war-songs. When within a hundred
yards of the opposing ranks, they halted, and sent in their
challenge. The Ngatiraukawa and Ngatiapa heralds passed
each other in silence, and each delivered his message to the
hostile chief.

We could see that the allies were led by Hunia in all the
bravery of his war-costume. In his hair he wore a heron
plume, and another was fastened near the muzzle of his short
carbine ; his limbs were bare, but about his shoulders he had
a pure white scarf of satin. His kilt was gauze-silk, of three
colours — pink, emerald, and cherry — arranged in such a way
as to show as much of the green as of the two other colours.
The contrast, which upon a white skin would have been glaring
in its ugliness, was perfect when backed by the nut-brown of
Hunia's chest and legs. As he ran before his tribe, he was
the ideal savage.

The instant that the heralds had returned, a charge took

?64 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. iv.

place, the forces passing through each other's rank's as they do
upon the stage, but with frightful yells. After this, they formed
two deep, in thiee companies, and danced the " musket-exercise
war-dance" in wonderful time, the women leading, thrusting
out their tongues, and shaking their long pendant breasts.
Among them was Hamuera's wife, standing drawn up to her
full height, her limbs stiffened, her head thrown back, her
mouth wide open and tongue protruding, her eyes rolled so as
to show the white, and her arms stretched out in front of her,
as she slowly chanted. The illusion was perfect : she became
for the time a mad prophetess ; yet all the frenzy was assumed
at a whim, to be cast aside in half an hour. The shouts were
of the same under-breath kind as in the haka, but they were
aided by the sounds of horns and conch-shells, and from the
number of men engaged the noise was this time terrible. After
much fierce singing, the musket-dance was repeated, with furious
leaps and gestures, till the men became utterly exhausted, when
the review was closed by a general discharge of rifles. Running
with nimble feet, the dancers were soon back within their pahs,
and the feast, beginning now, was, like a Russian banquet,
prolonged till morning.

It is not hard to understand the conduct of Lord Durham's
settlers, who landed here in 1837. The friendly natives re-
ceived the party with a war-dance, which had upon them such
an effect that they immediately took ship for Australia, where
they remained.

The next day, when we called on Governor Hunia at his
wahre to bid him farewell, before our departure for the capital,
he made two speeches to us which are worth recording as
specimens of Maori oraiory. Speaking through Mr. Buller,
who had been kind enough to escort us to the Ngatiapa's
wahre, Hunia said : —

" Hail, guests ! You have just now seen the settlement ol
a great dispute — the greatest of modern time.

" This was a weighty trouble — a grave difficulty.

"Many PakeTias have tried to settle it — in vain. For
Petatone was it reserved to end it. I have said that great is
our gratitude to Petatone.

" If Petatone hath need of me in the future, I shall be there.

CHAP, nj PAREWANUI PAH. 265

If he climbs the lofty tree, I will climb it with him. If he
scales high cliffs, I will scale them too. If Petatone needeth
help, he shall have it; and where he leads, there will I
follow.

" Such are the words of Hunia."

To this speech one of us replied, explaining our position as
guests from Britain.

Hunia then began again to speak : —

" O my guests, ? few days since when asked for a war dance,
I refused. I refused because my people were sad at heart.

" We were loath to refuse our guests, but the tribes were
grieved ; the people were sorrowful at heart

" To-day we are happy, and the war-dance has taken place.

" O my guests, when ye return to our great Queen, tell her
that we will fight for her again as we have fought before.

" She is our Queen as well as your Queen — Queen of Maories
and Queen of Pakeha.

" Should wars arise, we will take up our rifles, and aarch
whithersoever she shall direct.

" You have heard of the King movement I was a Kingite ;
but that did not prevent me fighting for the Queen — I and my
chiefs.

" My cousin, Wire'mu, went to England, and saw our Queen.
He returned. . . .

" When you landed in this island, he was already dead. . . .

" He died fighting for our Queen.

" As he died, we will die, if need be — I and all my chiefs.
This do you tell our Queen.

" I have said."

This passage, spoken as Hunia spoke it, was one of noble
eloquence and singular rhetoric art The first few words about
Wiremu were spoken in a half-indifferent way ; but there was a
long pause before and after the statement that he was dead, and
a sinking of the voice when he related how Wire'mu had died,
followed by a burst of sudden fire in the " As he died, wt will
die — I and all my chiefs."

After a minute or two, Hunia resumed : —

** This is another word.

u We are all of us glad to see you.

266 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. IV.

" When we wrote to Petatone, we asked him that he would
bring with him Pakdhas from England and from Australia —
Pakthias from all parts of the Queen's broad lands.

" Pakdhas who should return to tell the Queen that the
Ngatiapa are her liegemen.

" We are much rejoiced that you are here. May your heart
rest here among us ; but if you go once more to your English
home, tell the people that we are Pe'tatone's faithful subjects
and the Queen's.

" I have said."

After pledging Hunia in a cup of wire, we returned to our
temporary home.

CHAPTER V.

THE MAORIES.

PARTING with my companions (who were going northwards) in
order that I might return to Wellington, and thence take ship
to Twiranaki, I started at daybreak on a lovely morning to walk
oy the sea-shore to Otaki. As I left the bank of the Manawatu
river for the sands, Mount Egmont near Taranaki, and Mounts
Ruapehu and Tongariro, in the centre of the island, hung their
great snow-domes in the soft blue of the sky behind me, and
seemed to have parted from their bases.

I soon passed through the flax-swamp where we for days had
shot the pukelco, and coming out upon the wet sands, which
here are glittering and full of the Taranaki steel, I took off
boots and socks, and trudged the whole distance barefoot,
regardless of the morrow. It was hard to walk without crunch-
ing with the heel shells which would be thought rare at home,
and here and there charming little tern and other tiny sea-fowl
flew at me, and all but pecked my eyes out for coming near
their nests.

During the day I forded two large rivers and small streams
innumerable, and swam the Ohau, where Dr. Featherston last
week lost his dog-cart in the quicksands, but I managed to
reach Otaki before sunset, in time to revel in a typical New
Zealand view. The foreground was composed of ancient sand-
hills, covered with the native flax, with the deliciously-scented
Manuka ti-tree, brilliant in white flower, and with giant fern,
tuft-grass, and tussac. Farther inland was the bush, evergreen,
bunch-like in its foliage, and so overladen with parasitic
vegetation, that the true leaves were hidden by usurpers, or
crushed to death in the folds of snake-like creepers. The

a 68 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. v.

view was bounded by bush-clad mountains, rosy with the sunset
tints.

Otaki is Archdeacon Hadneld's church-settlement of Christian
Maories ; but of late there have been signs of wavering in
the tribes, and I found Major Edwardes, who had been with
us at Parewanui, engaged in holding, for the Government, a
runanga of Hau-Haus, or anti-Christian Maories, in the Otaki
Pah. Some of these fellows had lately held a meeting, and had
themselves re-baptized, but this time out of instead of into the
Church. They received fresh names, and are said to have
politely invited the Archdeacon to perform the ceremony.

Maori Church-of-Englandism has proved a failure. A dozen
native clergymen are, it is true, supported in comfort by their
countrymen, but the tribes would support a hundred such, if
necessary, rather than give up the fertile " reservations," such
as that of Otaki, which their pretended Christianity has secured.
There is much in the Maori that is tiger-like, and it is in the blood,
not to be drawn out of it by a few years of playing at Christianity.

The labours of the missionaries have been great, their earnest-
ness and devotion unsurpassed. Up to the day of the outbreak
of Hau-Hauism, their influence with the natives was thought to
be enormous. The entire Maori race had been baptized, thou-
sands of natives had attended the schools, hundreds had become
communicants and catechists. In a day, the number of native
Christians was reduced from thirty thousand to some hundreds.
Right and left the tribes flocked to the bush, deserting mission-
stations, villages, herds, and fields. Those few who dared not
go were there in spirit ; all sympathised, if not with the Hau-
Hau movement, at least with Kingism. The Archdeacon and
his brethren of the holy calling were at their wits' ends. Not
only did Christianity disappear : civilization itself accompanied
religion in her flight, and habits of bloodshed and barbarity,
unknown since the nominal renunciation of idolatry, in a day
returned. The fall was terrible, but it went to show that the
apparent success had been fictitious. The natives had built
mills and owned ships ; they had learnt husbandry and cattle
breeding ; they had invested money, and put acre to acre and
house to house ; but their moral could hardly have kept pace
with their material, or even with their mental gains.

CHAP, v.] THE MAORIES. 269

A magistrate who knows the Maories well, told me that their
Christianity is only on the surface. He one day asked Mate'ne
te Whiwhi, a Ngatiraukawa chief, " Which would you soonest
eat, Matene' — pork, beef, or Ngatiapa?" Matene' answered,
with a turn-up of his eyes, " Ah ! I'm a Christian !" " Never
mind that to me, you know," said the Englishman. " The flesh
of the Ngatiapa is sweet," said Mate'ne, with a smack of the
lips that was distinctly audible. The settlers tell you that when
the Maories go to war, they use up their Bibles for gun-wadding,
and then come on the missionaries for a fresh supply.

The Polynesians, when Christianity is first presented to them,
embrace it with excitement and enthusiasm ; the " new religion "
spreads like wildfire ; the success of the teachers is amazing. A
few years, however, show a terrible change. The natives find
that all white men are not missionaries ; that if one set of
Englishmen deplore their licentiousness, there are others to
back them in it ; that Christianity requires self-restraint. As
soon as the first flare of the new religion is over, it begins to
decline, and in some cases it expires. The story of Christianity
in Hawaii, in Otaheite, and in New Zealand, has been much
the same : among the Tahitians it was crushed by the relapse
of the converts into extreme licentiousness ; among the Maories
it was put down by the sudden rise of the Hau-Hau fanaticism.
A return to a better state of things has in each case followed,
but the missionaries work now in a depressed and saddened
way, which contrasts sternly with the exultation that inspired
them before the fresh outbreak of the demon which they
believed they had exorcised. They reluctantly admit that the
Polynesians are fickle as well as gross ; not only licentious, but
untrustworthy. There is, they will tell you, no country where
it is so easy to plant or so hard to maintain Christianity.

The Maori religion is that of all the Polynesians — a vague
polytheism, which in their poems seems now and then to
approach to pantheism. The forest glades, the mountain rocks,
the stormy shores, all swarm with fairy singers, and with throngs
of gnomes and elves. The happy laughing islanders have a
heaven, but no hell in their mythology ; of " sin " they have no
conception. Hau-Hauism is not a Polynesian creed, but a
jxjlitical and religious system based upon the earlier books of

j7o GEEA TEE BRITAIN. [CHAP, v,

the Old Testament ; even the cannibalism which was added
was not of the Maori kind. The Indians of Chili ate human
flesh for pleasure and variety ; those of Virginia were cannibals
only on state occasions, or in religious ceremonials ; but the
Maories seem originally to have been driven to man-eating by
sheer want of food. Since Cook left pigs upon the islands, the
excuse has been wanting, and the practice has consequently
ceased. As revived by the Hau-Haus, the man-eating was
of a ceremonial nature, and, like the whole of the observances
of the Hau-Hau fanaticism, an inroad upon ancient Maori
customs.

There is one great difference which severs the Maories from
the other Polynesians. In New Zealand caste is unknown ;
every Maori is a gentleman or a slave. Chiefs are elected by
the popular voice, not, indeed, by a show of hands, but by a
sort of general agreement of the tribe ; but the chief is a political,
not a social superior. In the windy climate of New Zealand,
men can push themselves to the front too surely by their energy
and toil to remain socially in an inferior class. Caste is im-
possible where the climate necessitates activity and work. The
Maories, too, we should remember, are an immigrant race ;
probably no high-caste men came with them — all started from
equal rank.

Like the Tongans, the Maories pay great reverence to their
well-born women ; slave women are of no account. The Friendly
Islanders exclude both man and woman slave from the Future
Life ; but the Maori Rangatira not only admits his followers to
heaven, but his wife to council, A Maori chief is as obedient
to the warlike biddings, and as grateful for the praising glance
or smile of his betrothed, as a planter-cavalier of Carolina, or a
Cretan volunteer ; and even the ladies of New Orleans cannot
have gone further than the wives of Hunia and Ihakara in
spurring on the men to war. The Maori Andromaches outdo
their European sisters, for they themselves proceed to battle,
and animate their Hectors by songs and shouts. Even the
sceptre of tribal rule — the greenstone meri, or royal club — is
often entrusted to them by their warrior husbands, and used to
lead the war-dance or the charge.

The delicacy of treatment shown by the Maories towards

CH A p V. J THE MA OR TEi

their women may go far to account for the absenc
for the native race among the English population,
man's respect for the sex is terribly shocked whe
woman staggering under the weight of the wigwi.
children of a " brave," who stalks behind her through
of Austin, carrying his rifles and his pistols, but not
ounce, unless in the shape of a thong with which to has
squaw's steps. What wonder if the men who sit by sn.
while their wives totter under basketsful of mould on
boulevard works at Delhi are called lazy scoundrels by ti.
press of the North-West, or if the Shoshone's, who eat the bread
of idleness themselves, and hire out their wives to the Pacific
Railroad Company, are looked upon as worse than dogs in
Nevada, where the thing is done ? It is the New Zealand native'
treatment of his wife that makes it possible for an hone
Englishman to respect or love an honest Maori.

In general, the newspaper editors and idle talkers of th
frontier districts of a colony in savage lands speak with mingled
ridicule and contempt of the men with whom they daily struggle ;
at best, they see in them no virtue but ferocious bravery. The
Kansas and Colorado papers call Indians " fiends," " devils,"
or dismiss them laughingly in peaceful times as " bucks," whose
lives are worth, perhaps, a buffalo's, but who are worthy of
notice only as potential murderers or thieves. Such, too, is the
tone of the Australian press concerning the aboriginal inhabi-
tants of Queensland or Tasmania. Far otherwise do the New
Zealand papers speak of the Maori warriors. They may some-
times call them grasping, overreaching traders, or underrate
their capability of receiving civilization of a European kind, but
never do they affect to think them less than men, or to advocate
the employment towards them of measures which would be
repressed as infamous if applied to brutes. We should, I think,
see in this peculiarity of conduct, not evidence of the existence
in New Zealand of a spirit more catholic and tolerant towards
savage neighbours than that which the English race displays in
Australia or America, but rather a tribute to the superiority in
virtue, intelligence, and nobility of mind possessed by the
Maori over the Red Indian or the Australian Black.

It is not only in their treatment of their women that the

GREATER BRITAIX. [CHAP. v.

cheir chivalry. One of the most noble traits of

pie is their habit of " proclaiming " the districts in

ic cause of war as the sole fighting-ground, and

ing their enemies, however defenceless, when found

European nations might take a lesson from New

aVTaories in this and other points.

Maories are apt at learning, merry, and, unlike other

Asians, trustworthy, but also, unlike them, mercenary. At

cime of the Manawatu sale, old Aperahama used to write to

r. Featherston almost every day : " O Petatone, let the price

of the block be ^9,999,999 19^. 9^.," the mysteries of eleven

pence three-farthings being far beyond his comprehension. The

Maories have, too, a royal magnificence in their ideas of gifts

nd grants — witness Te Heke's bid of 100,000 acres of land for

overnor Fitzroy's head, in answer to the offer, by the Governor,

f a small price for his.

The praises of the Maories have been sung by so many
writers, and in so many keys, that it is necessary to keep it
distinctly before us that they are mere savages, though brave,
shrewd men. There is an Eastern civilization— that of China
and Hindostan — distinct from that of Europe, and ancient
beyond all count ; in this the Maories have no share. No true
Hindoo, no Arab, no Chinaman, has suffered change in one
tittle of his dress or manners from contact with the Western
races; of this essential conservatism there is in the New Zealand
savage not a trace. William Thompson, the Maori "king-
maker," used to dress as any Englishman • Maories on board
our ships wear the uniform of the able-bodied seaman ; Governor
Hunia has ridden as a gentleman-rider in a steeplechase, equipped
in jockey dress.

Savages though they be, in irregular warfare we are not their
match. At the end of 1865 we had of regulars and militia
seventeen thousand men under arms in the North Island of
New Zealand, including no less then twelve regiments of the
line at their " war strength," and yet our generals were
despondent as to their chance of finally defeating the warriors
of a people which — men, women, and children — numbered but
thirty thousand souls.

Men have sought far and wide for the reasons which led to

CHAP v."] THE MAORIES. 373

our defeats in the New Zealand wars. We were defeated by the
Maories, as the Austrians by the Prussians, and the French by
the English in old times — because the victors were the better
men. Not the braver men, when both sides were brave alike ;
not the stronger; not, perhaps, taking the average of our
officers and men, the more intelligent ; but capable of quicker
movement, able to subsist on less, more crafty, more skilled in
the thousand tactics of the bush. Aided by their women, who
when need was, themselves would lead the charge, and who at
all times dug their fern-root and caught their fish ; marching
where our regiments could not follow, they had, as have the
Indians in America, the choice of time and place for their
attacks, and while we were crawling about our military roads
upon the coast, incapable of traversing a mile of bush, the
Maories moved securely and secretly from one end to the other
of the island. Arms they had, ammunition they could steal, and
blockade was useless with enemies who live on fern-root. When
they found that we burnt their pahs, they ceased to build them •,
that was all. When we brought up howitzers, they went where
no howitzers could follow. It should not be hard even for our
pride to allow that such enemies were, man for man, in their
own lands our betters.

All nations fond of horses, it has been said, flourish and
succeed. The Maories love horses and ride well. All races
that delight in sea are equally certain to prosper, empirical
philosophers will tell us. The Maories own ships by the score,
and serve as sailors whenever they get a chance : as deep-sea
fishermen they have no equals. Their fondness for draughts
shows mathematical capacity ; in truthfulness they possess the
first of virtues. They are shrewd, thrifty; devoted friends,
brave men. With all this, they die.

" Can you stay the surf which beats on Wangamti shore ?"
say the Maories of our progress ; and, of themselves : " We
are gone — like the moa."

374 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. n.

CHAPTER VI.
THE Two FLIES.

" As the Pakeha fly has driven out the Maori fly ;
As the Pakeha grass has killed the Maori grass ;
As the Pakeha rat has slain the Maori rat ;
As the Pakeha clover has starved the Maori fern,
So will the Pakeha destroy the Maori. "

THESE are the mournful words of a well-known Maori song.

That the English daisy, the white clover, the common
thistle, the camomile, the oat, should make their way rapidly
in New Zealand, and put down the native plants, is in no way
strange. If the Maori grasses that have till lately held undis-
turbed possession of the New Zealand soil, require for their
nourishment the substances A, B, and C, while the English
clover needs A, B, and D ; from the nature of things A and B
will be the coarser earths or salts, existing in larger quantities,
not easily losing vigour and nourishing force, and recruiting
their energies from the decay of the very plant that feeds on
them ; but C and D will be the more ethereal, the more easily
destroyed or wasted substances. The Maori grass, having
sucked nearly the whole of C from the soil, is in a weakly state,
when in comes the English plant, and, finding an abundant
store of untouched D, thrives accordingly, and crushes down
the Maori.

The positions of flies and grasses, of plants and insects, are,
however, not the same. Adapted by nature to the infinite
variety of soils and climates, there are an infinite number of
different plants and animals ; but whereas the plant depends
apon both soil and climate, the animal depends chiefly upon
climate, and little upon soil — except so far as his home or his

CHAf. vi.] THE TWO FLIES. 175

food themselves depend on soil. Now, while soil wears out,
climate does not. The climate in the long run remains the
same, but certain apparently trifling constituents of the soil
will wholly disappear. The result of this is, that while pigs
may continue to thrive in New Zealand for ever and a day,
Dutch clover (without manure) will only last a given and calcu-
lable time.

The case of the flies is plain enough. The Maori and the
English fly live on the same food, and require about the same
amount of warmth and moisture : the one which is best fitted
to the common conditions will gain the day, and drive out the
other. The English fly has had to contend not only against
other English flies, but against every fly of temperate climates :
we having traded with every land, and brought the flies of every
clime to England. The English fly is the best possible fly ot
the whole world, and will naturally beat down and exterminate,
or else starve out, the merely provincial Maori fly. If a great
singer — to find whom for the London stage the world has been
ransacked — should be led by the foible of the moment to sing
for gain in an unknown village, where on the same night a
rustic tenor was attempting to sing his best, the London tenor
would send the provincial supperless to bed. So it is with the
English and Maori fly.

Natural selection is being conducted by nature in New
Zealand on a grander scale than any we have contemplated,
for the object of it here is man. In America, in Australia, the
white man shoots or poisons his red or black fellow, and exter-
minates him through the workings of superior knowledge ; but
in New Zealand it is peacefully, and without extraordinary
advantages, that the Pake'ha beats his Maori brother.

That which is true of our animal and vegetable productions
is true also of our man. The English fly, grass, and man, they
and their progenitors before them, have had to fight for life
against their fellows. The Englishman, bringing into his
country from the parts to which he trades all manner of men,
of grass seeds, and of insect germs, has filled his land with
every kind of living thing to which his soil or climate will
afford support. Both old inhabitants and interlopers have to
qaaintain a struggle which at once crushes and starves out of

T 2

j76 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. VI

life every weakly plant, man, or insect, and fortifies the race by
continual bufferings. The plants of civilized man are generally
those which will grow best in the greatest variety of soils and
climates; but in any case, the English fauna and flora are
peculiarly fitted to succeed at our antipodes, because the
climates of Great Britain and New Zealand are almost the
same, and our men, flies, and plants — the " pick " of the whole
world — have not even to encounter the difficulties of acclimati-
zation in their struggle against the weaker growths indigenous
to the soil.

Nature's work in New Zealand is not the same as that which
she is quickly doing in North America, in Tasmania, in Queens-
land. It is not merely that a hunting and fighting people is
being replaced by an agricultural and pastoral people, and must
farm or die : the Maori does farm ; Maori chiefs own villages,
build houses, which they let to European settlers ; we have
here Maori sheep-farmers, Maori shipowners, Maori mechanics,
Maori soldiers, Maori rough-riders, Maori sailors, and even
Maori traders. There is nothing which the average English-
man can do which the average Maori cannot be taught to do as
cheaply and as well. Nevertheless, the race dies out. The
Red Indian dies because he cannot farm; the Maori farms,
and dies.

There are certain special features about this advance of the
birds, beasts, and men of Western civilization. When the first
white man landed in New Zealand, all the native quadrupeds
save one, and nearly all the birds and river-fishes, were extinctj
though we have their bones and traditions of their existence.
The Maories themselves were dying out. The dinornis wa9
gone ; there were few insects, and no reptiles. " The birds di*
because the Maories, their companions, die," is the native
saying. Yet the climate is singularly good, and food for beast
and bird so plentiful that Captain Cook's pigs have planted
colonies of " wild boars " in every part of the islands, and
English pheasants have no sooner been imported than they
have begun to swarm in every jungle. Even the Pake'ha flea
has come over in the ships, and wonderfully has he thriven.

The terrible want of food for men that formerly characterised
New Zealand has had its effects upon the habits of the Maori

vtj THE TWO FLIES. 377

race. Australia has no native fruit-trees worthy cultivation,
although in the whole world there is no such climate and soil
for fruits ; still, Australia has kangaroos and other quadrupeds.
The Ladrones were destitute of quadrupeds, and of birds,
except the turtle-dove ; but in the warm damp climate fruits
grew, sufficient to support in comfort a dense population. In
New Zealand, the windy cold of the winters causes a need for
something of a tougher fibre than the banana or the fern-root.
There being no native beasts, the want was supplied by human
flesh ; and war, furnishing at once food and the excitement
which the chase supplies to peoples that have animals to hunt,
became the occupation of the Maories. Hence in some degree
the depopulation of the land ; but other causes exist, by the
side of which cannibalism is as nothing.

The British Government has been less guilty than is commonly
believed as regards the destruction of the Maories. Since the
original misdeed of the annexation of the isles, we have done
the Maories no serious wrong. We recognised the claim of a
handful of natives to the soil of a country as large as Great
Britain, of not one-hundredth part of which had they ever
made the smallest use; and, disregarding the fact that our
occupation of the coast was the very event that gave the land
its value, we have insisted on buying every acre from the tribes.
Allowing title by conquest to the Ngatiraukawa, as I saw at
Parewanui Pah, we refuse to claim even the lands we conquered
from the " Kingites."

The Maories have always been a village people, tilling a little
land round their pahs, but incapable of making any use of the
great pastures and wheat countries which they " own." Had
we at first constituted native reserves, on the American system,
we might, without any fighting, and without any more rapid
destruction of the natives than that which is taking place, have
gradually cleared and brought into the market nearly the whole
country, which now has to be purchased at enormous prices,
and at the continual risk of war.

As it is, the record of our dealings with the Queen's native
subjects in New Zealand lias been almost free from stain ; but
if we have not committed crimes, we have certainly not failed
to blunder : our treatment of William Thompson was at the

»78 GRfiATER B&ItAlN. [CHAP. n.

best a grave mistake. If ever there lived a patriot, he was
one, and through him we might have ruled in peace the Maori
race. Instead of receiving the simplest courtesy from a people
which in India showers honours upon its puppet kings and
rajahs, he underwent fresh insults each time that he entered an
English town or met a white magistrate or subaltern, and he
died while I was in the colonies — according to Pakeha phy-
sicians, of liver-complaint j according to the Maories, of a
broken heart.

At Parewanui and Otaki, I remarked that the half-breeds are
fine fellows, possessed of much of the nobility of both the
ancestral races, while the women are famed for grace and
loveliness. In miscegenation it would have seemed that there
was a chance for the Maori, who, if destined to die, would at
least have left many of his best features of body and mind to
live in the mixed race ; but here comes in the prejudice of
blood, with which we have already met in the case of the
negroes and Chinese. Morality has so far gained ground as
greatly to check the spread of permanent illegitimate con-
nexions with native women, while pride prevents intermarriage.
The numbers of. the half-breeds are not upon the increase : a
few fresh marriages supply the vacancies that come of death,
but there is no progress, no sign of the creation of a vigorous
mixed race. There is something more in this than foolish
pride, however ; there is a secret at the bottom at once of the
cessation of mixed marriages and of the dwindling of the
pure Maori race — and it is the utter viciousness of the native
girls. The universal unchastity of the unmarried women,
" Christian " as well as heathen, would be sufficient to destroy
a race of gods. The story of the Maories is that of the
Tahitians, and is written in the decorations of every gate-post
or rafter in their pahs.

We are more distressed at the present and future of the
Maories than they are themselves. For all our greatness, we
pity not the Maories more profoundly than they do us when,
ascribing our morality to calculation, they bask in the sunlight,
and are happy in their gracelessness. After all, virtue and
arithmetic come from one Greek root

CHAPTER VII.
THE PACIFIC.

CLOSELY resembling Great Britain in situation, size, and climate,
New Zealand is often styled by the colonists " The Britain of
the South," and many affect to believe that her future is
destined to be as brilliant as has been the past of her mother-
country. With the exaggeration of phrase to which the Eng-
lish New Zealanders are prone, they prophesy a marvellous
hereafter for the whole Pacific, in which New Zealand, as the
carrying and manufacturing country, is to play the foremost
part, the Australias following obediently in her train.

Even if the differences of Separatists, Provincialists, and
Centralists should be healed, the future prosperity of New Zea-
land is by no means secure. Her gold yield is only about a
fifth of that of California or Victoria. Her area is not
sufficient to make her powerful as an agricultural or pastoral
country, unless she comes to attract manufactures and carrying
trade from afar, and the prospect of New Zealand succeeding
in this effort is but small. Her rivers are almost useless for
manufacturing purposes, owing to their floods; the timber-
supply of all her forests is not equal to that of a single county
in the State of Oregon ; her coal is inferior in quality to that
of Vancouver Island, in quantity to that of Chili, in both
respects to that of New South Wales. The harbours of New
Zealand are upon the eastern coasts, but the coal is chiefly
upon the other side, where the river bars make trade impos-
sible.

The coal that has been found at the Bay of Islands is said to
be plentiful and of good quality, and may be made largely
available for steamers on the coast ; the steel-sand of Taranaki,

ago GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. vn.

smelted by the use of petroleum, also found within the piovince
may become of value; her own wool, too, New 'Zealand will
doubtless one day manufacture into cloth and blankets ; but
these are comparatively trifling matters : New Zealand may
become rich and populous without being the great power of
the Pacific, or even of the South.

The climate of the North Island is winterless, moist, and
warm, and its effects are already seen in a certain want of
enterprise shown by the Government and settlers. I remarked
that the mail-steamers which leave Wellington almost every
day are invariably " detained for despatches : " it looks as
though the officers of the Colonial or Imperial Government
commence to write their letters only when the hour for the
sailing of the ship has come. An Englishman visiting New
Zealand was asked in my presence how long his business at
Wanganui would keep him in the town. His answer was :
" In London it would take me half an hour ; so I suppose
about a week — about a week ! "

In Java and the other islands of the Indian archipelago, we
find examples of the effect of the supineness of dwellers in the
tropics upon the economic position of their countries. Many,
of the Indian isles possess both coal and cheap labour, but
have failed to become manufacturing communities on a large
scale only because the natives have not the energy requisite for
the direction of factories and workshops, while European
foremen have to be paid enormous wages, and, losing their
spirit in the damp unchanging climate of the islands, soon
become more indolent than the natives.

The position of the various stores of coal in the Pacific is
of extreme importance as an index to the future distribution of
power in that portion of the world ; but it is not enough to
know where coal is to be found without looking also to the
quantity, quality, cheapness of labour, and facility for transport.
In China (in the Si Shan district) and in Borneo, there are
extensive coal-fields, but they lie " the wrong way " for trade.
On the other hand, the Californian coal — at Monte Diablo,
San Diego, and Monterey — lies well, but is bad in quality.
The Talcahuano bed in Chili is not good enough for ocean
steamers, but might be made use of for manufactures, although

. vn.] THE PACIFIC. 281

Chili has but little iron. Tasmania has good coal, but in no
great quantity, and the beds nearest to the coast are formed of
inferior anthracite. The three countries of the Pacific which
must, for a time at least, rise to manufacturing greatness, are
Japan, Vancouver Island, and New South Wales ; but which of
these will become wealthiest and most powerful depends mainly
on the amount of coal which they respectively possess, so
situated as to be cheaply raised.* The dearness of labour under
which Vancouver suffers will be removed by the opening of the
Pacific Railroad, but for the present New South Wales has the
cheaper labour ; and upon her shores at Newcastle are abun-
dant stores of a coal of good quality for manufacturing purposes,
although for sea use it burns " dirtily," and too fast : the colony
possesses also ample beds of iron, copper, and lead. Japan,
as far as can be at present seen, stands before Vancouver and
New South Wales in almost every point : she has cheap labour,
good climate, excellent harbours, and abundant coal; cotton
can be grown upon her soil, and this, and that of Queensland,
she can manufacture and export to America and to the East.
Wool from California and from the Australias might be carried
to her to be worked, and her rise to commercial greatness has
already commenced with the passing of a law allowing Japanese
workmen to take service with European capitalists in the
" treaty-ports." Whether Japan or New South Wales is
destined to become the great wool-manufacturing country, it is
certain that fleeces will not long continue to be sent half round
the world — from Australia to England — to be worked, and
then round the other half back from England to Australia, to
be sold as blankets.

The future of the Pacific shores is inevitably brilliant ; but it
is not New Zealand, the centre of the water-hemisphere, which
will occupy the position that England has taken in the Atlantic,
but some country, such as Japan or Vancouver, jutting out into
the ocean from Asia or from America, as England juts out
from Europe. If New South Wales usurps the position, it will
be not from her geographical situation, but from the rnanufac-

* The best coal of the Pacific has lately been proved to be that of
Saghalien, once Japanese, now Russian.

j8i GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. vn.

turing advantages she gains by the possession of vast mineral
wealth.

The relations of America and Australia will be the key to
the future of the South Pacific.

PART IIL

AUSTRALIA.

285

CHAPTER L

SYDNEY.

AT early light on Christmas-day, I put off from shore in one of
those squalls for which Port Nicholson, the harbour of Welling-
ton, is famed. A boat which started from the ship at the same
time as mine from the land was upset, but in such shallow
water that the passengers were saved, though they lost a portion
of their baggage. As we flew towards the mail steamer, the
Kaikoura, the harbour was one vast sheet of foam, and columns
of spray were being whirled in the air, and borne away far
inland on the gale. We had placed at the helm a post-office
clerk, who said that he could steer, but, as we reached the
steamer's side, instead of luffing up, he suddenly put the helm
hard a-weather, and we shot astern of her, running violently
before the wind, although our treble-reefed sail was by this time
altogether down. A rope was thrown us from a coal-hulk, and,
catching it, we were soon on board, and spent our Christmas
walking up and down her deck on the slippery black dust, and
watching the effects of the gale. After some hours the wind
moderated, and I reached the Kaikoura just before she sailed.
While we were steaming out of the harbour through the boil of
waters that marks the position of the submarine crater, I found
that there was but one other passenger for Australia to share
with me the services of ten officers and ninety men, and the
accommodations of a ship of 1500 tons. " Serious preparations
and a large ship fora mere voyage from one Australasian colony
to another," I felt inclined to say, but during the voyage and
my first week in New South Wales I began to discover that in
England we are given over to a singular delusion as to the con-
nexion of New Zealand and Australia,

286 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. l.

Australasia is a term much used at home to express the whole
of our Antipodean possessions ; in the colonies themselves the
name is almost unknown, or, if used, is meant to embrace
Australia and Tasmania, not Australia and New Zealand. The
only reference to New Zealand, except in the way of foreign
news, that I ever found in an Australian paper, was a congratu-
latory paragraph on the great amount of the New Zealand debt ;
the only allusion to Australia that I detected in the Wellington
Independent was in a glance at the future of the colony, in which
the editor predicted the advent of a time when New Zealand
would be a naval nation, and her fleet engaged in bombarding
Melbourne, or levying contributions upon Sydney.

New Zealand, though a change for the better is at hand, has
hitherto been mainly an aristocratic country; New South Wales
and Victoria mainly democratic. Had Australia and New
Zealand been close together, instead of as far apart as Africa
and South America, there could have been no political connexion
between them so long as the traditions of theii; first settlement
endured. Not only is the name "Australasia" politically
meaningless, however, but it is also geographically incorrect, for
New Zealand and Australia are as completely separated from
each other as Great Britain and Massachusetts. No promontory
of Australia runs out to within 1000 miles of any New Zealand
cape; the distance between Sydney and Wellington is 1400
miles ; from Sydney to Auckland is as far. The distance from
the nearest point of New Zealand of Tasman's peninsula, which
itself projects somewhat from Tasmania, is greater than that of
London from Algiers : from Wellington to Sydney, opposite
ports, is as far as from Manchester to Iceland, or from Africa
to Brazil.

The sea that lies between the two great countries of the
South is not, like the Central Pacific, a sea bridged with islands
ruffled with trade winds, or overspread with a calm that
permits the presence of light-draught paddle steamers. The
seas which separate Australia from New Zealand are cold,
bottomless, without islands, torn by Arctic currents, swept by
polar gales, and traversed in all weathers by a mountainous
swell After the gale of Christmas -day, we were blessed with a
continuance of light breezes oc cur way to Sydney, but never

CHAP. i.J SYDNEY. 287

did we escape the long rolling hills of seas that seemed to surge
up from the Antarctic pole : our screw was as often out of as in
the water ; and, in a fast new ship, we could scarcely average
nine knots an hour throughout the day. The ship which had
brought the last Australian mail to Wellington before we sailed
was struck by a sea which swept her from stem to stern, and
filled her cabins two feet deep; and this in December, which
here is Midsummer, and answers to our July. Not only is the
intervening ocean wide and cold, but New Zealand presents to
Australia a rugged coast guarded by reefs and bars, and backed
by a snowy range, while she turns towards Polynesia and
America all her ports and bays.

No two countries in the world are so wholly distinct as
Australia and New Zealand. The islands of New Zealand are
inhabited by Polynesians, the Australian continent by negroes ;
New Zealand is ethnologically nearer to America, Australia to
Africa, than New Zealand to Australia.

If we turn from ethnology to scenery and climate, the countries
are still more distinct. New Zealand is one of the groups of
volcanic islands that stud the Pacific throughout its whole
extent ; tremendous cliffs surround it on almost every side ; a
great mountain chain runs through both islands from north to
south ; hot springs abound, often close to glaciers and eternal
snows ; earthquakes are common, and active volcanoes not un-
known. The New Zealand climate is damp and windy ; the
land is covered in most parts with a tangled jungle of tree-ferns,
creepers, and parasitic plants ; water never fails, and, though
winter is unknown, the summer heat is never great ; the islands
are always green. Australia has for the most part flat, yellow,
sun-burnt shores ; the soil may be rich, the country good for
wheat and sheep, but to the eye it is an arid plain ; the winters
are pleasant, but in the hot weather the thermometer rises
higher than it does in India, and dust storms and hot winds
sweep the land from end to end. It is impossible to conceive
countries more unlike each other than are our two great
dominions of the south. Their very fossils are as dissimilar as
are their flora and fauna of our time.

At dawn of the first day of the new year we sighted the
rooks where the Duncan Dunbar was lost with all hands, and a

288 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. i.

few minutes afterwards we were boarded by the crew engaged
by the Sydney Morning Herald, who had been lying at " The
Heads " all night, to intercept our news and telegraph it to the
city. The pilot and regular news-boat hailed us a little later
when we had fired a gun. The contrast between this Austra-
lian energy and the supineness of the New Zealanders was
striking, but not more so than that between my first view of
Australia and my last view of New Zealand. Six days earlier I
had lost sight of the snowy peak of Mount Egmont, graceful as
the Cretan Ida, while we ran before a strong breeze, in the
bright English sunlight of the New Zealand afternoon, the
albatrosses screaming around our stern : to-day, as we steamed
up Port Jackson, towards Sydney Cove, in the dead stillness
that follows a night of oven-like heat, the sun rose flaming in a
lurid sky, and struck down upon brown earth, yellow grass, and
the thin shadeless foliage of the Australian bush ; while, as we
anchored, the ceaseless chirping of the crickets in the grass and
trees struck harshly on the ear.

The harbour, commercially the finest in the world, is not
without a singular beauty if seen at the best time. By the
" hot-wind sunrise," as I first saw it, the heat and glare destroy
the feeling of repose which the endless succession of deep,
sheltered coves would otherwise convey ; but if it be seen from
shore in the afternoon, when the sea-breeze has sprung up,
turning the sky from red to blue, all is changed. From a neck
of land that leads out to the Government House, you catch a
glimpse of an arm of the bay on either side, rippled with the
cool wind, intensely blue, and dotted with white sails : the
brightness of the colours that the sea-breeze brings almost
atones for the wind's unhealthiness.

In the upper portion of the town, the scene is less pic-
turesque ; the houses are of the commonplace English ugliness,
worst of all possible forms of architectural imbecility ; and are
built, too, as though for English fogs, instead of semi-tropical
heat. Water is not to be had, and the streets are given up to
clouds of dust, while not a single shade-tree breaks the rays of
the almost vertical sun.

The afternoon of New Year's dayl spent at the " Midsummer
Meeting " of the Sydney Jockey Club, on the race-course near

CHAP. I.] 289

the city, where I found a va^ *r ,,;&. ot "holiday-makers assembled
on the bare red earth that du/ duty for " turf," altliough there
was a hot wind blowing, and the thermometer stood at 103°
in the shade. For my conveyance to the race-course I trusted
to one of the Australian Hansom cabs, made with fixed Vene-
tian blinds on either side, so as to allow a free draught of air.

The ladies in the grand stand were scarcely to be distinguished
from Englishwomen in dress or countenance, but the crowd
presented several curious types. The fitness of the term " corn-
stalks " applied to the Australian-born boys was made evident
by a glance at their height and slender build ; they have plenty
of -activity and health, but are wanting in power and weight
The girls, too, are slight and thin ; delicate, without being
sickly. Grown men who have emigrated as lads and lived ten
or fifteen years in New Zealand, eating much meat, spending
their days in the open air, constantly in the saddle, are burly,
bearded, strapping fellows, physically the perfection of the
English race, but wanting in refinement and grace of mind, and
this apparently by constitution ; not through the accident of
occupation or position. In Australia there is promise of a more
intellectual nation : the young Australians ride as well, shoot as
well, swim as well, as the New Zealanders ; are as little given to
book-learning ; but there is more shrewd intelligence, more wit
and quickness, in the sons of the larger continent. The Aus-
tralians boast that they possess the Grecian climate, and every
young face in the Sydney crowd showed me that their sky is not
more like that of Attica than they are like the old Athenians.
The eager burning democracy that is springing up in the Aus-
tralian great towns is as widely different from the republicanism
of the older States of the American Union as it is from the
good-natured conservatism of New Zealand, and their high
capacity for personal enjoyment would of itself suffice to dis-
tinguish the Australians from both Americans and British.
Large as must be the amount of convict blood in New Soutl.
Wales, there was no trace of it in the features of those present
upon the race-course. The inhabitants of colonies which have
never received felon immigrants often cry out that Sydney is a
convict city, but the prejudice is not borne out by the counte-
pances of the inhabitants, nor by the records of local crime,

L. i/. [CHAP. i.

The black stain has not yet wholl jisappeared : the streets of
Sydney are still a greater disgrace to civilization than are even
those of London ; but, putting the lighter immoralities aside,
security for life and property is not more perfect in England
than in New South Wales. The last of the bushrangers were
taken while I was in Sydney.

The race-day was followed by a succession of hot winds,
during which only the excellence of the fruit-market made
Sydney endurable. Not only are all the English fruits to be
found, but plantains, guavas, oranges, loquats, pomegranates,
pine-apples from Brisbane, figs of every kind, and the delicious
passion-fruit abound ; and if the gum-tree forests yield no shady
spots for picnics, they are not wanting among the rocks at
Botany, or in the luxuriant orange-groves of Paramatta.

A Christmas week of heat such as Sydney has seldom known
was brought to a close by one of the heaviest southerly storms
on record. During the stifling morning, the telegraph had
announced the approach of a gale from the far south, but in the
early afternoon the heat was more terrible than before, when
suddenly the sky was dark with whirling clouds, and a cold
blast swept through the streets, carrying .« fog of sand, breaking
roofs and windows, and dashing to pieces many boats. When
the gale ceased, some three hours later, the sand was so deep
in houses that here and there men's feet left footprints on the
stairs.

Storms of this kind, differing only one from another in
violence, are common in the hot weather : they are known as
"southerly bursters;" but the early settlers called them " brick-
fielders," in the belief that the dust they brought was whirled
up from the kilns and brick-fields to the south of Sydney. The
fact is that the sand is carried along for one or two hundred
miles, from the plains in Dampier and Auckland counties ; for
the Australian "burster" is one with the Punjaub dust-storm,
and the " dirt-storm " of Colorado.

CHAPTER II.

RIVAL COLONIES.

NEW SOUTH WALES, born in 1788, and Queensland in 1859,
the oldest and youngest of our Australian colonies, stand side
by side upon the map, and have a common frontier of 700
miles.

The New South Welsh cast jealous glances towards the more
recently founded States. Upon the brilliant prosperity of
Victoria they look doubtingly, and, ascribing it merely to the
gold-fields, talk of " shoddy ;" but of Queensland — an agricul-
tural country, with larger tracts of rich land than they them-
selves possess — the Sydney folks are, not without reason,
envious.

A terrible depression is at present pervading trade and agri-
culture in New South Wales. Much land near Sydney has
gone out of cultivation ; hands are scarce, and the gold dis-
coveries in the neighbouring colonies, by drawing off the surplus
population, have made harvest labour unattainable. Many
properties have fallen to one-third their former value, and the
colony — a wheat-growing country — is now importing wheat and
flour to the value of half-a-million sterling every year.

The depressed condition of affairs is the result, partly ot
commercial panics following a period of inflation, partly of bad
seasons, now bringing floods, now drought and rust, and partly
of discouragement of immigration by the colonial democrats — a
policy which, however beneficial to Australia it may in the long
run prove, is for the moment ruinous to the sheep-farmers and
to the merchants in the towns. On the other hand, the
labourers for their part assert that the arrivals of strangers —
at all events, of skilled artisans — are still excessive, and that

u 2

29* GREATER HMTAtN. [cttAr. a.

all the ills of the colony are due to over-immigration and free
trade.

To a stranger, the rush of population and outpour of capital
from Sydney, first towards Victoria, but now to Queensland and
New Zealand, appear to be the chief among the causes of the
momentary decline of New South Wales. Of immigrants there
is at once an insufficient and an over-great supply. Respecta-
ble servant-girls, carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, plasterers, and
the like, do well in the colonies, and are always wanted ; of
clerks, governesses, iron-workers, and skilled hands of manufac-
turers, there is almost always an over-supply. By a perverse
fate, these latter are the immigrants of whom thousands seek
the colonies every year, in spite of the daily publication in Eng-
land of dissuading letters.

As the rivalry of the neighbour-colonies lessens in the lapse
of time, the jealousy that exists between them will doubtless die
away, but it seems as though it will be replaced by a political
divergence, and consequent aversion, which will form a fruitful
source of danger to the Australian confederation.

In Queensland the great tenants of Crown lands — " squatters"
as they are called — sheep-farmers holding vast tracts of inland
country, are in possession of the government, and administer the
laws to their own advantage. In New South Wales, power is
divided between the. pastoral tenants on the one hand, and the
democracy of the towns upon the other. In Victoria, the
democrats have beaten down the squatters, and in the interests
of the people put an end to their reign ; but the sheep-farmers
of Queensland and of the interior districts of New South
Wales, ignoring wells, assert that the " up-country desert " or
"unwatered tracts" can never be made available for agricultuie,
while the democracy of the coast point to the fact that the
same statements were made only a few years back, of lands
now bearing a prosperous population of agricultural settlers.

The struggle between the great Crown tenants and the agri-
cultural democracy, in Victoria already almost over, in New
South Wales can be decided only in one way, but in Queens-
land the character of the country is not entirely the same : the
coast and river tracts are tropical bush-lands, in which sheep-
fanning is impossible, and in which sugar, cotton, and spic«|

CHAP, n.] RIVAL COLONIES. 293

alone can be made to pay. To the copper, gold, hides, tallow,
wool, which have hitherto formed the stereotyped list of Austra-
lian exports, the Northern colony has already added ginger,
arrowroot, tobacco, coffee, sugar, cotton, cinnamon, and quinine.

The Queenslanders have not yet solved the problem of the
settlement of a tropical country by Englishmen, and of its cul-
tivation by English hands. The future, not of Queensland
merely, but of Mexico, of Ceylon, of every tropical country, of
our race, of free government itself, are all at stake ; but the
success of the experiment that has been tried between Brisbane
and Rockampton has not been great. The colony, indeed, has
prospered much, quadrupling its population and trebling its
exports and revenue in six years ; but it is the Darling Downs,
and other table-land sheep-countries, or, on the other hand, the
Northern gold-fields, which are the main cause of the prosperity ;
and in the sugar and cotton culture of the coast, coloured
labour is now almost exclusively employed, with the usual effect
of degrading field-work in the eyes of European settlers, and
of forcing upon the country a form of society of the aristocra-
tic type.

It is possible that just as New England has of late forbidden
to Louisiana the importation of Chinamen to work her sugar-
fields, just as the Kansas radicals have declared that they will
not recognise the Bombay Hammal as a brother, just as the
Victorians have refused to allow the further reception of con-
victs by West Australia, separated from their territories by
i ooo miles of desert, so the New South Welsh and Victorians
combined may at least protest against the introduction of a
mixed multitude of Bengalees, Chinamen, South Sea Islanders,
and Malays to cultivate the Queensland coast plantations. If,
however, the other colonies permit their Northern sister to con-
tinue in her course of importing dark-skinned labourers, to
form a peon population, a few years will see her a wealthy
cotton and sugar-growing country, with all the vices of a slave-
holding government, though without the name of slavery. The
planters of the coast, united with the squatters of the table-
lands or " Downs," will govern Queensland, and render union
with the free colonies impossible, unless great gold discoveries
take place and save the country to Australia,

:94 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. n.

Were it not for the pride of race that everywhere shows
itself in the acts of English settlers, there might be a bright side
to the political future of the Queensland colony. The coloured
labourers at present introduced — industrious Tongans, and
active Hill-coolies from Hindostan, laborious, sober, and free
from superstition — should not only be able to advance the com-
mercial fortunes of Queensland as they have those of the
Mauritius, but eventually to take an equal share in free govern-
ment with their white employers. To avoid the gigantic evil
of the degradation of hand labour, which has ruined morally
as well as economically the Southern States of the American
republic, the Indian, Malay, and Chinese labourers should be
tempted to become members of land-holding associations. A
large spice and sugar-growing population in Northern Queens-
land would require a vast agricultural population in the South
to feed it ; and the two colonies, hitherto rivals, might grow up
as sister countries, each depending upon the other for the
supply of half its needs. It is, however, worthy of notice that
the agreements of the Queensland planters with the imported
dark-skinned field-hands provide only for the payment of wages
in goods, at the rates of 6s. to los. a month. The "Goods"
consist of pipes, tobacco, knives, and beads. Judging from the
experience of California and Ceylon, there can be little hope of
the admission of coloured men to equal rights by English
settlers, and the Pacific islands offer so tempting a field to kid-
napping skippers that there is much fear that Queensland may
come to show us not merely semi-slavery, but peonage of that
worst of kinds, in which it is cheaper to work the labourer to
death than to " breed " him.

Such is the present rapidity of the growth and rise to power
of Queensland, such the apparent poverty of New South Wales,
that were the question merely one between the Sydney wheat-
growers and the cotton-planters of Brisbane and Rockampton,
the sub-tropical settlers would be as certain of the foremost
position in any future confederation, as they were in America
when the struggle lay only between the Carolinas and New
England. As it is, just as America was first saved by the coal
of Pennsylvania and Ohio, Australia will be saved by the coal
of New South Wales. Queensland possesses some small storeg

CHAP, n.] RIVAL COLONIES. 29?

of coal, but the vast preponderance of acreage of the great
power of the future lies in New South Wales.

On my return from a short voyage to the north, I visited the
coal-field of New South Wales at Newcastle, on the Hunter.
The beds are of vast extent : they lie upon the banks of a
navigable river, and so near to the surface that the best qualities
are raised, in a country of dear labour, at Ss. or gs. the ton, and
delivered on board ship for i2s. For manufacturing purposes
the coal is perfect ; for steam-ship use it is, though somewhat
" dirty," a serviceable fuel ; and copper and iron are found in
close proximity to the beds. The Newcastle and Port Jackson
fields open a brilliant future to Sydney in these times, when
coal is king in a far higher degree than was ever cotton. To
her black beds the colony will owe not only manufactures,
bringing wealth and population, but that leisure which is be-
gotten of riches — leisure that brings culture, and love of
harmony and truth.

Factories are already springing up in the neighbourhood of
Sydney, adding to the whirl and the bustle of the town, and
adding, too, to its enormous population, already disproportion-
ate to that of the colony in which it stands. As the depot for
much of the trade of Queensland and New Zealand, and as the
metropolis of pleasure to which the wealthy squatters pour from
all parts of Australia, to spend, rapidly enough, their hard-won
money, Sydney would in any case have been a populous city ;
but the barrenness of the country in which it stands has, until
the recent opening of the railroads, tended still further to
increase its size, by failing to tempt into the country the Euro-
pean immigrants. The Irish in Sydney form a third of the
population, yet hardly one of these men but meant to settle
upon land when he left his native island.

In France there is a tendency to migrate to Paris; in
Austria, a continual drain towards Vienna ; in England, towards
London. A corresponding tendency is observable throughout
Australia and America. Immigrants hang about New York,
Philadelphia, Boston, Sydney, Melbourne ; and, finding that
they can scrape a living in these large cities with toil somewhat
less severe than that which would be needed to procure them a
decent livelihood in the bush, the unthrifty as well as the dissi-

396 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. n.

pated throng together in densely-populated "rookeries" in the
cities, and render the first quarter of New York and the so-called
" Chinese " quarter of Melbourne an insult to the civilization of
the world.

In the case of Australia this concentration of population is
becoming more remarkable day by day. Even under the system
of free selection, by which the Legislature has attempted to
encourage agricultural settlement, the moment a free selector
can make a little money he comes to one of the capitals to
spend it. Sydney is the city of pleasure, to which the wealthy
Queensland squatters resort to spend their money, returning to
the North for fresh supplies only when they cannot afford another
day of dissipation, while Melbourne receives the outpour of
Tasmania.

The rushing to great cities the moment there is money to be
spent, characteristic of the settlers in all these colonies, is much
to be regretted, and presents a sad contrast to the quiet stay-at-
home habits of American farmers. Everything here is fever and
excitement ; — as in some systems of geometry, motion is the
primary, rest the derived idea. New South Welshmen tell you
that this unquiet is peculiar to Victoria ; to a new-comer, it
seems as rife in Sydney as in Melbourne.

Judging from the Colonial Government reports, which immi-
grants are conjured by the inspectors to procure and read, and
which are printed in a cheap form for the purpose, the New
South Welsh can hardly wish to lure settlers into " the bush ;"
for in one of these documents, published while I was in Sydney,
the curator of the Museum reported that in his explorations he
never went more than twelve miles from the city, but that within
that circuit he found seventeen distinct species of land-snakes,
two of sea-snakes, thirty of lizards, and sixteen of frogs — seventy-
eight species of reptiles rewarded him in all. The seventeen
species of land-snakes found by him within the suburbs were
named by the curator in a printed list ; it commenced with the
pale-headed snak^ and ended with the death-add.eT,

297

CHAPTER III.

VICTORIA.

THE smallest of our southern colonies except Tasmania — one-
fourth the size of New South Wales, one-eighth of Queensland,
one-twelfth of West Australia, one-fifteenth of South Australia —
Victoria is the wealthiest of the Australian nations, and, India
alone excepted, has the largest trade of any of the dependencies
of Great Britain.

When Mr. Fawkner's party landed in 1835 upon the Yarra
banks, mooring their boat to the forest trees, they formed a
settlement upon a grassy hill behind a marsh, and began to
pasture sheep where Melbourne, the capital, now stands. In
twenty years, Melbourne became the largest city but one in the
southern hemisphere, having 150,000 people within her limits
or those of the suburban towns. Victoria has grander public
buildings in her capital, larger and more costly railroads, a
greater income, and a heavier debt than any other colony, and
she pays to her Governor ;£ 10,000 a year, or one-fourth more
than even New South Wales.

When looked into, all this success means gold. There is
industry, there is energy, there is talent, there is generosity and
public spirit, but they are the abilities and virtues that gold will
bring, in bringing a rush from all the world of dashing fellows
in the prime of life. The progress of Melbourne is that of San
Francisco ; it is the success of Hokitika on a larger scale, and
refined and steadied by having lasted through some years — the
triumph of a population which has hitherto consisted chiefly of
adult males.

Sydney people, in their jealousy of the Victorians, refuse to
it even that the superior energy of the Melbourne wen is a

J98 GREATER BKITATN. fCHiP. ro.

necessary consequence of their having been the pick of the
spirited youths of all the world, brought together by the rush
for gold. At the time of the first "find" in 1851, all the reso-
lute, able, physically strong do-noughts of Europe and America
flocked into Port Philip, as Victoria was then called ; and such
timid and weak men as came along with them being soon
crowded out, the men of energy and tough vital force alone
remained.

Some of the New South Welsh, shutting their eyes to the
facts connected with the gold-rush, assert so loudly that the
Victorians are the refuse of California, or " Yankee scum," that
when I first landed in Melbourne I expected to find street-cars,
revolvers, big hotels, and fire-clubs, euchre, caucuses, and
mixed drinks. I could discover nothing American about Mel-
bourne except the grandeur of the public buildings and the
width of the streets, and its people are far more thoroughly
British than are the citizens of the rival capital. In many senses,
Melbourne is the London, Sydney the Paris, of Australia.

Of the surpassing vigour of the Victorians there can be no
doubt ; a glance at the map shows the Victorian railways
stretching to the Murray, while those of New South Wales are
still boggling at the Green Hills, fifty miles from Sydney. Mel-
bourne has carried off the Australian trade with the New Zealand
gold-fields from Sydney, the nearer port. Melbourne imports
Sydney shale, and makes from it mineral oil, before the Sydney
people have found out its value ; and gas in Melbourne is cheaper
than in Sydney, though the Victorians are bringing their coal
five hundred miles, from a spot only fifty miles from Sydney.

It is possible that the secret of the superior energy of the
Victorians may He, not in the fact that they are more American,
but more English, than the New South Welsh. The leading
Sydney people are mainly the sons or grandsons of original
settlers — " corn-stalks " reared in the semi-tropical climate of
the coast ; the Victorians are full-blooded English immigrants,
bred in the more rugged climes of Tasmania, Canada, or Great
Britain, and brought only in their maturity to live in the exhi-
larating air of Melbourne, the finest climate in the world for
healthy men : Melbourne is hotter than Sydney, but its climate
is never tropical. The squatters on the Queensland downs,

CHAP. HI.] VICTORIA, 299

mostly immigrants from England, show the same strong vitality
that the Melbourne men possess ; but their brother immigrants
in Brisbane — the Queensland capital, where the languid breeze
resembles that of Sydney — are as incapable of prolonged exer-
tion as are the " corn-stalks."

Whatever may be the causes of the present triumph of Mel-
bourne over Sydney, the inhabitants of the latter city are far
from accepting it as likely to be permanent. They cannot but
admit the present glory of what they call the " Mushroom City."
The magnificent pile of the new Post-office, the gigantic Trea-
sury (which, when finished, will be larger than our own in Lon-
don), the University, the Parliament House, the Union and
Melbourne Clubs, the City Hall, the Wool Exchange, the via-
ducts upon the Government railroad lines — all are Cyclopean
in their architecture, all seem built as if to last for ever ; still,
they say that there is a certain want of permanence about the
prosperity of Victoria. When the gold discovery took place, in
1851, such a trade sprang up that the imports of the colony
jumped from one million to twenty-five millions sterling in three
years ; but, although she is now commencing to ship bread stuffs
to Great Britain, exports and imports alike show a steady decrease.
Considerably more than half of the hand-workers of the colony
are still engaged in gold-mining, and nearly half the population
is resident upon the gold-fields ; yet the yield shows, year by year,
a continual decline. Had it not been for the discoveries in New
Zealand, which have carried off the floating digger population,
and for the wise discouragement by the democrats of the mono-
polization of the land, there would have been distress upon the
gold-fields during the last few years. The Victorian population
is already nearly stationary, and the squatters call loudly for
assisted immigration and free trade; but the stranger sees
nothing to astonish him in the temporary stagnation that
attends a decreasing gold production.

The exact economical position that Victoria occupies is easily
ascertained, for her statistics are the most perfect in the world ;
the arrangement is a piece of exquisite mosaic. The brilliant
statistician who fills the post of Registrar-General to the colony,*
had the immense advantage of starting clear of all tradition,

* Mr. Archer has now received promotion to another post.

3°o GREATER BRITAIN. [CIIAI-. in.

unhampered and unclogged ; and, as the Governments of the
other colonies have for the last few years taken Victoria for
model, a gradual approach is being made to uniformity of
system. It was not too soon, for British colonial statistics are
apt to be confusing. I have seen a list of imports in which
one class consisted of ale, aniseed, arsenic, asafostida, and
astronomical instruments ; boots, bullion, and salt butter ;
capers, cards, caraway seed ; gauze, gin, glue, and gloves ;
maps and manure ; philosophical instruments and salt pork ;
sandal-wood, sarsaparilla, and smoked sausages. Alphabetical
arrangement has charms for the official mind.

Statistics are generally considered dull enough, but the statis-
tics of these young countries are figure-poems. Tables that in
England contrast jute with hemp, or this man with that man,
here compare the profits of manufactures with those of agricul-
ture, or pit against each other the powers of race and race.

Victoria is the only country in existence which possesses a
statistical history from its earliest birth ; but, after all, even
Victoria falls short of Minnesota, where the settlers founded
the " State Historical Society " a week before the foundation
of the State.

Gold, wheat, and sheep are the three staples of Victoria, and
have each its party, political and commercial — diggers, agricul-
tural settlers, and squatters — though of late the diggers and the
landed democracy have made common cause against the squat-
ters. Gold can now be studied best at Ballarat, and wheat at
Clunes, or upon the Barrabool hills behind Geelong ; but I
started first for Echuca, the head-quarters of the squatter
interest, and metropolis of sheep, taking upon my way Kyneton,
one of the richest agricultural districts of the colony, and also
the once famous gold diggings of Bendigo Creek.

Between Melbourne and Kyneton, where I made my first
halt, the railway rurrs through undulating lightly-timbered
tracts, free from underwood, and well grassed. By letting my
eyes persuade me that the burnt-up herbage was a ripening
crop of wheat or oats, I found a likeness to the views in the
weald of Sussex, though the foliage of the gums, or eucalypti, is
thinner than that of the English oaks.

Riding from Kyneton to Carlsruhe: Pastoria, and the foot-

CHAP, lit] VICTORIA. 301

hills of the " Dividing Range," I found the agricultural com-
munity busily engaged on the harvest, and much excited upon
the great thistle question. Women and tiny children were
working in the fields, while the men were at Kyneton, trying
in vain to hire harvest hands from Melbourne at less than
£2 los. or ^3 a week and board. The thistle question was
not less serious : the " thistle inspectors," elected under the
" Thistle Prevention Act," had commenced their labours ; and
although each man agreed with his friend that his neighbour's
thistles were a nuisance, still he did not like being fined for not
weeding out his own. The fault, they say, lies in the climate ;
it is too good, and the English weeds have thriven. Great as
was the talk of thistles, the fields in the fertile Kyneton district
were as clean as in a well-kept English farm, and showed the
cleareet signs of the small farmer's personal care.

Every one of the agricultural villages that I visited was a
full-grown municipality. The colonial English, freed from the
checks which are put by interested landlords to local govern-
ment in Britain, have passed, in all the settlements, laws under
which any village must be raised into a municipality on fifty of
the villagers (the number varies in the different colonies) signing
a requisition, unless within a given time a larger number sign a
petition to the contrary effect.

After a short visit to the bustling digging town of Castle-
maine, I pushed on by train to Sandhurst, a borough of great
pretensions, which occupies the site of the former digging camp
at Bendigo. On a level part of the line between the two great
towns, my train dashed through some closed gates, happily
without hurt. The Melbourne Argus of the next day said that
the crash had been the result of the signalman taking the fancy
that the trains should wait on him, not he upon the trains, so
he had " closed the gates, hoisted the danger signal, and
adjourned to a neighbouring store to drink." On my return
from Echuca, I could not find that he had been dismissed.

When hands are scarce, and lives valuable not to the possessor
only, but to the whole community, care to avoid accidents
might be expected ; but there is a certain recklessness in all
young countries, and not even in Kansas is it more observable
(ban. in Victoria and New South Wales,

J01 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. lit.

Sandhurst, like Castleraaine, straggles over hill and dale for
many miles, the diggers preferring to follow the gold-leads, and
build a suburb by each alluvial mine, rather than draw their
supplies from the central spot. The extent of the worked-out
gold-field struck me as greater than in the fields round Placer-
ville ; but in California many of the old diggings are hidden by
the vines.

In Sandhurst, I could find none of the magnificent restaurants
of Virginia city ; none of the gambling saloons of Hokitika ;
and the only approach to gaiety among the diggers was made
in a drinking-hall, where some dozen red-shirted, bearded men
were dancing by turns with four well-behaved and quiet-looking
German girls, who were paid, the constable at the gate informed
me, by the proprietor of the booth. My hotel— "The Shamrock"
— kept by New York Irish, was a thoroughly American house ;
but digger civilization is everywhere American — a fact owing,
no doubt, to the American element having been predominant in
the first-discovered diggings — those of California.

Digger revolts must have been feared when the Sandhurst
Government Reserve was surrounded with a ditch strangely
like a moat, and palings that bear an ominous resemblance to a
Maori pah. In the morning I found my way through the
obstructions, and discovered the police-station, and in it the
resident magistrate, to whom I had a letter. He knew nothing
of " Gumption Dick," Hank Monk's friend, but he introduced
me to his intelligent Chinese clerk, and told me many things
about the yellow diggers. The bad feeling between the English
and the Chinese has not in the least died away. Upon the
worked-out fields of Castlemaine and Sandhurst, the latter do
what they please, and I saw hundreds of them washing quietly
and quickly in the old Bendigo creek, finding an ample living
in the leavings of the whites. So successful have they been
that a few Europeans have lately been taking to their plan, and
an old Frenchman who died here lately, and who, from his
working persistently in worn-out fields, had always been thought
to be a harmless idiot, left behind him twenty thousand pounds,
obtained by washing in company with the Chinese.

The spirit that called into existence the Ballarat anti-Chinese
mobs is not extinct in Queensland, as I found during my stay

cm?, m.] VTCTORTA. jOj

at Sydney. At the Crocodile Creek diggings in Northern
Queensland, whither many of the Chinese from New South
Wales have lately gone, terrible riots occurred the week after I
landed in Australia. The English diggers announced their
intention of " rolling up " the Chinese, and proceeded to
" jump their claims " — that is, trespass on the mining plots ;
for in Queensland the Chinese have felt themselves strong
enough to purchase claims. The Chinese bore the robbery for
some days, but at last a digger who had sold them a claim for
^50 one morning, hammered the pegs into the soft ground the
same day, and then "jumped the claim" on the pretence that
it was not " pegged out." This was too much for the Chinese
owner, who tomahawked the digger on the spot. The English
at once fired the Chinese town, and even attacked the English
driver of a coach for conveying Chinamen on his vehicle.
Some diggers in North Queensland are said to have kept
bloodhounds for the purpose of hunting Chinamen for sport, as
the rowdies of the old country hunt cats with terriers.

On the older gold-fields, such as those of Sandhurst and
Castlemaine, the hatred of the English for the Chinese lies
dormant, but it is not the less strong for being free from phy-
sical violence. The woman in a baker's shop near Sandhurst,
into which I went to buy a roll for lunch, shuddered when she
told me of one or two recent marriages between Irish " Biddies "
and some of the wealthiest Chinese.

The man against whom all this hatred and suspicion is directed
is no ill-conducted rogue or villain. The chief of the police at
Sandhurst said that the Chinese were " the best of citizens;" a
member of the Victorian Parliament, resident on the very edge
of their quarter at Geelong, spoke of the yellow men to me as
" well-behaved and frugal ;" the Registrar-General told me that
there is less crime, great or small, among the Chinese, than
among any equal number of English in the colony.

The Chinese are not denied civil rights in Victoria, as they
have been in California. Their testimony is accepted in the
courts against that of whites; they may become naturalized,
and then can vote. Some twenty or thirty of them, out of
30,000, have been naturalized in Victoria up to the present
time.

304 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. m.

That the Chinese in Australia look upon their stay in the
gold-fields as merely temporary is clear from the character of
their restaurants, which are singularly inferior to those of San
Francisco. The best in the colonies is one near Castlemaine,
but even this is small and poor. Shark's fin is an unheard-of
luxury, and even puppy you would have to order. " Silk-
worms fried in castor-oil " is the colonial idea of a Chinese
delicacy ; yet the famous sea-slug is an inhabitant of Queens-
land waters, and the Gulf of Carpentaria.

From Sandhurst northwards, the country, known as Elysium
Flats, becomes level, and is wooded in patches, like the " oak-
opening " prairies of Wisconsin and Illinois. Within fifty
miles of Echuca, the line comes out of the forest on to a vast
prairie, on which was a marvellous mirage of water and trees
at various step-like levels. From the other window of the
compartment carriage (sadly hot and airless after the American
cars), I saw the thin dry yellow grass on fire for a dozen miles.
The smoke from these " bush-fires " sometimes extends for
hundreds of miles to sea. In steaming down from Sydney to
Wilson's Promontory on my way to Melbourne, we passed
through a column of smoke about a mile in width when off
Wolongong, near Botany Bay, and never lost sight of it, as it
lay in a dense brown mass upon the sea, until we rounded
Cape Howe, two hundred miles farther to the southward.

The fires on these great plains are caused by the dropping
of fusees by travellers as they ride along smoking their pipes,
Australian fashion, or else by the spreading of the fires from
their camps. The most ingenious stories are invented by the
colonists to prevent us from throwing doubt upon their careful-
ness, and I was told at Echuca that the late fires had been
caused by the concentration of the sun's rays upon spots of
grass owing to the accidental conversion into burning-glasses
of beer-bottles that had been suffered to lie about. Whatever
their cause, the fires, in conjunction with the heat, have made
agricultural settlement upon the Murray a lottery. The week
before my visit, some ripe oats at Echuca had been cut down
to stubble by the hot wind, and farmers are said to count upon
the success of only one harvest in every three seasons. On
the other hand, the Victorian apricots, shrivelled by the hot

. m.] VICTORIA. 305

wind, are so many lumps of crystallized nectar when you pierce
their thick outer coats.

Defying the sun, I started off to the banks of the Murray
river, not without some regret at the absence of the continuous
street verandahs which in Melbourne form a first step towards
the Italian piazza. One may be deceived by trifles when the
character of an unknown region is at stake. Before reaching
the country, I had read, " Steam-packet Hotel, Esplanade,
Echuca ;" and, though experiences on the Ohio had taught me
to put no trust in " packets and hotels," yet I had somehow
come to the belief that the Murray must be a second Missouri
at least, if not a Mississippi. The " esplanade " I found to be
a myth, and the " fleet " of " steam-packets " was drawn up in
a long line upon the mud, there being in this summer-weather
no water in which it could float. The Murray in February is
a streamless ditch, which in America, if known and named at
all, would rank as a tenth-rate river.

The St. Lawrence is 2200 miles in length, and its tributary,
the Ottawa, 1000 miles in length ; itself receives a tributary
stream, the Gatineau, with a course of 420 miles. At 217
miles from its confluence with the Ottawa, the Gatineau is
still 1000 feet in width. At Albury, which even in winter is
the head of navigation on the Murray, you are only some
600 or 700 miles by river from the open sea, or about the
same distance as from Memphis in Tennessee to the mouth of
the Mississippi.

During six months of the year, however, the Murray is for
wool-carrying purposes an important river. The railway to
Echuca has tapped the river system in the Victorians' favour,
and Melbourne has become the port of the back country of
New South Wales, and even Queensland. " The Riverina is
commercially annexed " to Victoria, said the Premier of New
South Wales while I was in that colony, and the " Riverina "
means that portion of New South Wales which lies between
the Lachlan, the Murrumbidgee, and the Murray, to the north-
ward of Echuca.

Returning to the inn to escape the sun, I took up the
Riverina Herald, published at Echuca; of its twenty-four
columns, nineteen and a half are occupied by the eternal sheep

306 QREATE& BttttAtN. fCMAP. m.

in one shape or another. A representation of Jason's fleece
stands at the head of the title ; " wool " is the first word in the
first line of the body of the paper. More than half of the
advertisements are those of wool-brokers, or else of the fortu-
nate possessors of specifics that will cure the scab. One dis-
infectant compound is certified to by no less than seventeen
inspectors; another is puffed by a notice informing flock-
masters that, in cases of foot-rot, the advertiser goes upon the
principle of " no cure, no pay." One firm makes " liberal
advances on the ensuing clip ;" another is prepared to do the
like upon " pastoral securities." Ship-chandlers, regardless ot
associations, advertise in one line their bread and foot-rot oint-
ment, their biscuit and sheep-wash solution ; and the last of
the advertisements upon the front page is that of an " agent
for the sale of fat." The body of the paper contains complaints
against the judges at a recent show of wool, and an account of
the raising of a sawyer "120 feet in length and 23 feet in
girth " by the new " snagboat " working to clear out the river
for the floating down of the next wool-clip. Whole columns
of small type are filled with " impounding " lists, containing
brief descriptions of all the strayed cattle of each district.
The technicalities of the distinctive marks are surprising. Who
not to the manner born can make much of this : " Blue and
white cow, cock horns, 22 off-rump, IL off-ribs?" or of this:
" Strawberry stag, top off off-ear, J. C. over 4 off-rump, like
H. G. conjoined near loin and rump ?" This, again, is difficult :
" Swallow tail, off-ear, D reversed and illegible over F off-ribs,
PT off-rump." What is a " blue strawberry bull ?" is a question
which occurred to me. Again, what a phenomenon is this :
" White cow, writing capital A off-shoulder ?" A paragraph
relates the burning of "^£10,000 worth of country near Gam-
bier," and advertisements of Colt's revolvers and quack medi-
cines complete the sheet. The paper shows that for the most
part the colonists here, as in New Zealand, have had the
wisdom to adopt the poetic native names of places, and even
to use them for towns, streets, and ships. Of the Panama
liners, the Rakaia and Maitoura bear the names of rivers, the
Ruahinb and the Kaikoura, names of mountain ranges ; and
the colonial boats have for the most part familiar Maori or

.] VICTORIA. 307

Australian names ; for instance, Rangitoto, " hill of hills," and
Itangitira, " great and good." The New Zealand colonists are
better off than the Australian in this respect : Wongawonga,
Yarrayarra, and Wooloomooloo are not inviting ; and some of
the Australian villages have still stranger names. Nindooinbah
is a station in Southern Queensland ; Yallack-a-yallack, Boron-
gorong, Bunduramongee, Jabbarabbara, Thuroroolong, Yalla-
y-poora, Yanac-a-Yanac, Wuid Kerruick, Woolonguwoong-
wrinan, Woori Yalloak, and Borhoneyghurk, are stations in
Victoria. The only leader in the Herald is on the meat ques-
tion, but there is in a letter an account of the Christmas festivi-
ties at Melbourne, which contains much merry-making at the
expense of " unacclimatised new chums," as fresh comers to the
colonies are called. The writer speaks rapturously of the rush
on Christmas-day from the hot, dry, dusty streets to the
" golden fields of waving corn." The " exposed nature of the
Royal Park" prevented many excursionists from picnicking
there, as they had intended ; but we read on, and find that the
exposure dreaded was not to cold, but to the terrible hot wind
which swept from the plains of the north-west, and scorched
up every blade of grass in the open spots. We hear of Christ-
mas dinners eaten upon the grass at Richmond in the sheltered
shade of the gum-forest, but in the Botaniqal Gardens the
" plants had been much affected by the trying heat," How-
ever, "the weather on Boxing-day was more favourable for
open-air enjoyment," as the thermometer was only 98° in the
shade.

Will ever New Zealand or Australian bards spring up t«
write of the pale primroses that in September commence to
peep out from under the melting snows, and to make men look
forward to the blazing heat of the long December days ?
Strangely enough, the only English poem which an Australian
lad can read without laughing at the old country conceit that
connects frost with January, and hot weather with July, is
Thomson's " Seasons," for in its long descriptions of the
changes in England from spring to summer, from autumn to
winter, a month is only once named : " rosy-footed May *
cannot be said to " steal blushing on " in Australia, where May
answers to our November.

X 2

308 GREATER BRITAIN. [GHAI>. ill

In the afternoon I ventured out again, and strolled into the
gum-forest on the banks of the Campaspe river, not believing
the reports of the ferocity of the bunyips and alligators which
have lately scared the squatters who dwell on creeks. The
black trees, relieved upon a ground of white dust and yellow
grass, were not inviting, and the scorching heat soon taught me
to hate the shadeless boughs and ragged bark of the inevitable
gum. It had not rained for nine weeks at the time of my visit,
and the thermometer stood at 116° in the shade, but there was
nothing oppressive in the heat ; it seemed only to dry up the
juices of the frame, and dazzle you with intense brightness. I
soon came to agree with a newly-landed Irish gardener, who
told a friend of mine that Australia was a strange country, for
he could not see that the thermometer had " the sRghtest effect
upon the heat." The blaze is healthy, and fevers are unknown
in the Riverina, decay of noxious matter, animal or vegetable,
being arrested during the summer by the drought. This is a
hot year, for on the i2th of January the thermometer, even at
the Melbourne Observatory, registered 108° in the shade; and
123° in the shade was registered at Wentworth, near the con-
fluence of the Murray and the Darling.

As the afternoon drew on, and, if not the heat, at least the
sun declined, the bell-birds ceased their tuneful chiming, and
the forest was vocal only with the ceaseless chirp of the tree-
cricket, whose note recalled the goatsucker of our English
woods. The Australian landscapes show best by the red light
of the hot-weather sunsets, when the dark feathery foliage of
the gum-trees comes out in exquisite relief upon the fiery fogs
that form the sky, and the yellow earth, gaining a tawny hue
in the lurid glare, throws off a light resembling that which in
winter is reflected from our English snows. At sunset there
was a calm, but, as I turned to walk homeward, the hot wind
sprang up, and died again, while the trees sighed themselves
uneasily to sleep, as though fearful of the morrow's blast.

A night of heavy heat was followed by a breathless dawn,
and the scorching sun returned in all its redness to burn up
once more the earth, not cooled from the glare of yesterday.
Englishmen must be bribed by enormous gains before they will
work with continuous toil in such a climate, however healthy

309

CHAPTER IV.

SQUATTER ARISTOCRACY.

a WHAT is a Colonial Conservative ?" is a question that used
to be daily put to a Victorian friend of mine when he was in
London. His answer, he told me, was always, "A statesman
who has got four of the ' points ' of the People's Charter, and
wants to conserve them ;" but as used in Victoria, the term
" Conservative " expresses the feeling less of a political party
than of the whole of the people who have anything whatever to
lose. Those who have something object to giving a share in
the Government to those who have nothing ; those who have
much, object to political equality with those who have less ;
and, not content with having won a tremendous victory in
basing the Upper House upon a ^5000 qualification* and
;£ioo freehold or ^"300 leasehold franchise, the plutocracy are
meditating attacks upon the Legislative Assembly.

The democracy hold out undauntedly, refusing all monetary
tests, though an intelligence basis for the franchise is by no
means out of favour, except with the few who cannot read or
write. One day, when I was driving from Melbourne to Sand-
ridge, in company with a colonial merchant, he asked our car-
driver : " Now, tell me fairly : do you think these rogues of
fellows that hang about the shore here ought to have votes ?"
" No, I don't" " Ah, you'd like to see a 5^. fee on registration,
wouldn't you ?" The answer was sharp enough in its tone.
" Five shillings would be nothing to you ; it would be some-
thing to me, and it would be more than my brother could pay.
What I'd do would be to say that those who couldn't read
shouldn't vote — that's all. That would keep out the loafers."

The plutocratic party is losing, not gaining, ground in
* R$duced in 1868, and again altered

310 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP, rv

Victoria : it is far more likely that the present generation will
see the Upper House abolished than that it will witness the
introduction of restrictions upon the manhood suffrage which
exists for the Lower ; but there is one branch of the plutocracy
which actively carries on the fight in all the colonies, and which
claims to control society — the pastoral tenants of Crown lands,
or Squatter Aristocracy.

The word "squatter" has undergone a remarkable change
of meaning since the time when it denoted those who stole
Government land, and built their dwellings on it. As late as
1837, squatters were defined by the Chief Justice of New South
Wales as people occupying lands without legal title, and subject
to a fine on discovery. They were described as living by bar-
tering rum with convicts for stolen goods, and as being them-
selves invariably convicts or " expirees." Escaping suddenly
from these low associations, the word came to be applied to
graziers who drove their flocks into the unsettled interior, and
thence to those of them who received leases from the Crown of
pastoral lands.

The squatter is the nabob of Melbourne and Sydney, the
inexhaustible mine of wealth. He patronises balls, promenade
concerts, flower-shows ; he is the mainstay of the great clubs,
the joy of the shopkeepers, the good angel of the hotels ; with-
out him the opera could not be kept up, and the jockey-club
would die a natural death.

Neither squatters nor townsfolk will admit that this view of
the former's position is correct. The Victorian squatters tell
you that they have been ruined by confiscation, but that their
neighbours in New South Wales, who have leases, are more
prosperous ; in New South Wales, they tell you of the destruc-
tion of the squatters by " free selection," of which there is none
in Queensland, " the squatter's paradise ;" but in Queensland
the squatters protest that they have never made wages for their
personal work, far less interest upon their capital. " Not one
of us in ten is solvent," is their cry.

As sweeping assertions are made by the townsfolk upon the
other side. The squatters, they sometimes say, may well set
up to be a great landed aristocracy, for they have every fault of
a dominant caste except its generous vices. They are accused

CHAP. IV.] SQUATTER ARISTOCRACY. 311

of piling up vast hoards of wealth while living a most penui ious
life, and contributing less than would so many mechanics to
the revenue of the country, in order that they may return in
later life to England, there to spend what they have wrung from
the soil of Victoria or New South Wales.

The occupation of the whole of the Crown lands by squatters
has prevented the making of railways to be paid for in land, on
the American system ; but the chief of all the evils connected
with squatting is the tendency to the accumulation in a few
hands of all the land and all the pastoral wealth of the country,
an extreme danger in the face of' democratic institutions, such
as those of Victoria and New South Wales. Remembering
that manufactures are few, the swelling of the cities shows how
the people have been kept from the land ; considerably more
than half of the population of Victoria lives within the corpo-
rate towns.

A few years back, a thousand men held between them, on
nominal rents, forty million acres out of the forty-three and a
half million — mountain and swamp excluded — of which Victoria
consists. It is true that the amount so held has now decreased
to thirty millions, but on the other hand the squatters have
bought vast tracts which were formerly within their " runs,"
with the capital acquired in squatting, and, knowing the
country Better than others could know it, have selected the
most valuable land.

The colonial democracy in 1860 and the succeeding years
rose to a sense of its danger from the land monopoly, and
began to search about for means to put it down, and to destroy
at the same time the system of holding from the Crown ; for it
is singular that while in England there seems to be springing
up a popular movement in favour of the nationalisation of the
land, in the most democratic of the Australian colonies the
tendency is from Crown-land tenure towards individual freehold
ownership of the soil. Yet, here in Victoria there was a fair
field to start upon, for the land already belonged to the State —
the first of the principles included under the phrase, nationalised
land. In America, again, we see that, with the similar advan-
tage of State possession of territories which are still fourteen
tiroes the size of the French Empire, there is little or no ten-

Jil GREATER BE f TAIN. [CHAP. iv.

dency towards agitation for the continuance of State ownership.
In short, freehold ownership seems dear to the Anglo-Saxon
race ; while the national land plan would commend itself
rather to the Celtic races : to the Highlander, who remembers
clanship, to the Irishman, who regrets the Sept.

Since the Radicals have been in power, both here and in
New South Wales, they have carried Act after Act to encourage
agricultural settlers on freehold tenure, at the expense of the
pastoral squatters. The " free selection " plan now in operation
in New South Wales allows the agricultural settler to buy, but
at a fixed price, the freehold of a patch of land, provided it be
over forty acres, and less than 320, anywhere he pleases — even in
the middle of a squatter's " run," if he enters at once, and com-
mences to cultivate; and the Land Act of 1862 provides that
the squatting licence system shall entirely end with the year
1869. Forgetting that in every lease the Government reserved
the power of terminating the agreement for the purpose of the
sale of land, the squatters complain that free selection is but
confiscation, and that they are at the mercy of a pack of cattle-
stealers and horse-thieves, who roam through the country
haunting their runs like " ghosts," taking up the best land on
their runs, " picking the eyes out of the land," as it is called,
and turning to graze anywhere, on the richest grass, the sheep
and cattle they have stolen on their way. The best of them,
they say, are but "cockatoo farmers," living from hand to
mouth on what they manage to grub and grow. On the other
hand, the "free selection" principle "up country" is tempered
by the power of the " wealthy squatter to impound the cattle of
the poor little freeholder whenever he pleases to say that they
stray on to his " run ;" indeed, " Pound them off, or if you
can't, buy them off," has become a much-used phrase. The
squatter, too, is protected in Victoria by such provisions as that
" improvements " by him, if over £4.0 on forty acres, cover an
acre of land for each ^i. The squatters are themselves buying
largely of land, and thus profiting by the free selection. To a
stranger it seems as though the interests of the squatter have
been at least sufficiently cared for, remembering the vital neces-
sity for immediate action. In 1865, Victoria, smail as sfte is,
had not sold a tenth of her land.

CHAP. IT.] SQUATTER ARISTOCRACY. JH

In her free selectors, Victoria will gain a class of citizens
whose political views will contrast sharply with the strong anti-
popular sentiments of the squatters, and who, instead of spend-
ing their lives as absentees, will stay, they and their children,
upon the land, and spend all they make within the colony,
while their sons add to its labouring arms.

Since land has been, even to a limited extent, thrown open,
Victoria has suddenly ceased to be a wheat-importing, and has
become a wheat-exporting country. Flourishing agricultural
communities, such as those of Ceres, dunes, Kyneton, are
springing up on every side, growing wheat instead of wool,
while the wide extension which has in Victoria been given to
the principle of local self-government in the shape of shire-
councils, road-boards, and village-municipalities, allows of the
union of the whole of the advantages of small and great farming,
under the unequalled system of small holdings with co-operation
for improvements among the holders.

GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. r.

CHAPTER V.

COLONIAL DEMOCRACY.

PAYMENT of members by the State was the g.eat question under
debate in the Lower House during much of :he time I spent in
Melbourne, and, in spite of all the efforts of the Victorian
democracy, the bill was lost. The objection taken at home,
that payment degrades the House in the eyes of the people,
could never arise in a new country, where a practical nation
looks at the salaries as payment for work done, and obstinately
refuses to believe in the work being done without payment in
some shape or other. In these colonies, the reasons in favour
of payment are far stronger than they are in Canada or
America, for while there country or town share equally the
difficulties of finding representatives who will consent to travel
hundreds and thousands of miles to Ottawa or Washington ; in
the Australias, Parliament sits in towns which contain from
one-sixth to one-fourth of the whole population, and under a
non-payment system power is thrown entirely into the hands of
Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Hobarton.
Not only do these cities return none but their own citizens, but
the country districts, often unable to find within their limits men
who have sufficient time and money to be able to attend
throughout the sessions at the capital, elect the city traders to
represent them.

Payment of members was met by a proposition on the part
of the leader of the squatter party in the Upper House to carry
it through that assembly if the Lower House would introduce
the principle of personal representation ; but it was objected
that under such a system the Catholics, who form a fifth of the
population, might, if they chose, return a fifth of the members.

CHAP. V.] COLONIAL DEMOCRACY. 315

That they ought to be able to do so never seemed to strike
friend or foe. The Catholics, who had a long turn of power
under the O'Shaughnessey Government were finally driven out
for appointing none but Irishmen to the police. " I always
said this Ministry would go out on the back of a policeman,"
was the comment of the Opposition wit The present Ministry,
which is Scotch in tone, was hoisted into office by a great
coalition against the Irish Catholics, of whom there are only a
handful in the House.

The subject of national education, which was before the
colony during my visit, also brought the Catholics prominently
forward ; for an episcopal pastoral was read in £11 their churches
threatening to visit ecclesiastical censure upon Catholic teachers
in the common schools, and upon the parents of the children
who attend them. " Godless education " is as little popular
here as it used to be at home, and the Anglican and Catholit
clergymen insist that it is proposed to make their people pao
heavily for an education in which it would be contrary to their
conscience to share ; but the laymen seem less distressed than
their pastors. It has been said that the reason why the Catholic
bishop declined to be examined before the Education Com-
mission was that he was afraid of this question : " Are you
aware that half the Catholic children in the country are attend-
ing schools which you condemn ?"*

The most singular, perhaps, of the spectacles presented by
colonial politics during my visit was that of the Victorian
Upper House going deliberately into committee to consider its
constitution, with the view of introducing a bill for its own
reform, or to meditate, its enemies said, upon self-destruction.t
Whether the blow comes from within or without, there is every
probability that the Upper House will shortly disappear, and
the advice of Milton and Franklin be followed in having but a
single chamber. It is not unlikely that this step will be fol-
lowed by the demand of the Victorians to be allowed to choose
their own Governor, subject to his approval by the Queen, with
a view to making it impossible that needy men should be sent

* Victoria has now adopted a system of free secular education which is
working admirably.

t A bill altering the franchise and qualification was passed in 1868.

316 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAT-. T.

out to suck the colony, as they sometimes have been in the
past The Australians look upon the liberal expenditure of a
Governor as their own liberality, but upon meanness on nis
part as a robbery from themselves.

The Victorian have a singular advantage over the American
democrats in being unhampered by a constitution of antiquity
and renown. Constitution-tinkering is here continual ; the
new society is ever re-shaping its political institutions to keep
pace with the latest developments of the national mind ; in
America, the party of liberty, at this moment engaged in
remoulding in favour of freedom the worn-out constitution,
dares not even yet declare that the national good is its aim,
but keeps to the old watchwords, and professes to be treading
'n the footsteps of George Washington.

T The tone of Victorian democracy is not American. There
\ the defiant way of taking care of themselves and ignoring
c. Mr neighbours, characteristic of the founders of English
^ ntations in all parts of the world — the spirit which prompted
the passing, in 1852, of the Act prohibiting the admission to
the colony of convicts for three years after they had received
their pardons ; but the English race here is not Latinized as it
is in America. If it were, Australian democracy would not be
so " shocking " to the squatters. Democracy, like Mormonism,
would be nothing if found among Frenchmen or people with
black faces, but it is at first sight very terrible, when it smiles
on you from between a pair of rosy Yorkshire cheeks.

The political are not greater than the social differences between
Australia and America. Australian society resembles English
middle-class society ; the people have, in matters of literature
and religion, tastes and feelings similar to those which pervade
such communities as Birmingham or Manchester. On the
other hand, the vices of America are those of aristocracies ; her
virtues, those of a landed republic. Shop and factory are still in
the second rank ; wheat and corn still the prevailing powers.
In all the Australian colonies, land is coming to the front for
the second time under a system of small holdings ; but it is
doubtful whether, looking to the size of Melbourne, the landed
democracy will ever outvote the town-folk in Victoria.

That men of ability and character are proscribed has

CHAP, f,] COLONIAL DEMOCn.lCT. Jty

one of the charges brought against colonial democracy. For
my part, I found gathered in Melbourne, at the University, at
the Observatory, at the Botanical Garden, and at the Govern-
ment offices, men of the highest scientific attainments, drawn
from all parts of the world, and tempted to Australia by large
salaries voted by the democracy. The statesmen of all the
colonies are well worthy of the posts they hold. Mr. Macalister
in Queensland, and Mr. Martin* at Sydney, are excellent debaters.
Mr. Parkes,f whose biography would be the typical history of a
successful colonist, and who has fought his way up from the
position of a Birmingham artisan free-emigrant to that of Colo-
nial Secretary of New South Wales, is an able writer. The
business powers of the present Colonial Treasurer of New
South Wales are remarkable; and Mr. Higginbotham, the
Attorney-General of Victoria, possesses a fund of experience
and a power of foresight which it would be hard to equal at
home. Many of the ministers in all the colonies are men who
have worked themselves up from the ranks, and it is amusing
to notice the affected horror with which their antecedents are
recalled by those who have brought out a pedigree from the
old country. A Government clerk in one of the colonies told
me, that the three last ministers at the head of his department
had been " so low in the social scale, that my wife could not
visit theirs."

Class animosity runs much higher, and drives its roots far
deeper into private life in Victoria than in any other English-
speaking country I have seen. Political men of distinction are
shunned by their opponents in the streets and clubs ; and in-
stead of its being possible to differ on politics and yet continue
friends, as in the old country, I have seen men in Victoria
refuse to sit down to dinner with a statesman from whose views
on land questions they happened to dissent. A man once
warned me solemnly against dining with a quiet grave old
gentleman, on the ground that he was " a most dangerous radi-
cal— a perfect firebrand."

Treated in this way, it is not strange that the democratic
ministers and members stand much upon their dignity, and
Colonial Parliaments are not only as haughty as the parent
* Now Sir James, f Now also knighted*

ji8 GMATm BKtTAtlt. [CHAP. V.

Assembly at Westminster, but often inclined to assert their
privileges by the most arbitrary of means ? A few weeks before
I arrived in Melbourne, a member of the staff of the Argu*
newspaper was given up by the proprietors to soothe the infu-
riated Assembly. Having got him, the great question of what
to do with him arose, and he was placed in a vault with a grated
window, originally built for prisoners of the House, but which
had been temporarily made use of as a coal-hole. Such a dis-
turbance was provoked by the alleged barbarity of this proceed-
ing, that the prisoner was taken to a capital room upstairs,
where he gave dinner-parties every day. His opponents said
that the great difficulty was to get rid of him, for he seemed to
be permanently located in the Parliament House, and that,
when they ordered his liberation, his friends insisted that it
should not take place until he had been carried down to the
coal-hole cell which he had occupied the first day, and there
photographed " through the dungeon bars " as the " martyr ot'
the Assembly."

Though both Victoria and New South Wales are democratic,
there is a great difference between the two democracies. In
New South Wales, I found not a democratic so much as a mixed
country, containing a large and wealthy class with aristocratic
prejudices, but governed by an intensely democratic majority —
a country not unlike the State of Maryland. On the other
nand, the interest which attaches to the political condition of
Victoria is extreme, since it probably presents an accurate
view " in little," of the state of society which will exist in England,
after many steps towards social democracy have been taken, but
before the nation as a whole has become completely democratic.

One of the best features of the colonial democracy is its
earnestness in the cause of education. In England it is one of
our worst national peculiarities that, whatever our station, we
either are content with giving children an " education " which
is absolutely wanting in any real training for the mind, or aid
to the brain in its development, or else we give them a school-
ing which is a mere preparation for the law or Church, for it
has always been considered with us that it is a far greater matter
to be a solicitor or a curate than to be wise or happy. This is, of
course, a consequence partly of the energy of the race, and partly

CHAP. V.] COLONIAL DEMOCRACY. jt9

of our aristocratic form of society, which leads every member
of a class to be continually trying to get into the class immedi-
ately above it in wealth or standing. In the colonies, as in the
United States, the democratic form which society has taken, has
carried with it the continental habit of thought upon educational
matters, so that it would seem as though the form of society
influenced this question much more than the energy of the
race, which is rather heightened than depressed in these new
countries. The English Englishman says, " If I send Dick to
a good school and scrape up money enough to put him into a
profession, even if he don't make much, at least he'll be a
gentleman." The Australian or democratic Englishman says,
"Tom must ha\e good schooling, and must make the most of
it ; but I'll not have him knocking about in broad-cloth and
earning nothing; so no profession for him ; but let him make
money like me, and mayhap get a few acres more land."

Making allowance for the thinness of population in the bush,
education in Victoria is extremely general among the children,
and is directed by local committees with success, although the
members of the boards are often themselves destitute of all
knowledge except that which tells them that education will do
their children good. Mr. Geary, an inspector of schools, told
the Commissioners that he had examined one school where not
a single member of the local committee could write ; but these
immigrant fathers do their duty honestly towards the children
for all their ignorance, and there is every chance that the
schools will grow and grow until their influence on behalf of
freedom becomes as marked in Victoria as it ever has been in
Massachusetts. Education has a great advantage in countries
where political rights are widely extended : in the colonies, as
in America, there is a spirit of political life astir throughout the
country, and newspapers and public meetings continue an
education throughout life which in England ceases at twelve,
and gives place to driving sheep to paddocks, and shouting at
rooks in a wheatfield.

There is nothing in the state of Victorian schools to show
what will be the type of the next generation, but there are
many reasons for believing that the present disorganization of
colonial society will only cease with the attainment of complete

5» GREATER BK11A1X. [CHA*. f.

democracy or absolute equality of conditions, which must be
produced by the already democratic institutions in little more
than a generation. The squatter class will disappear as agricuU
ture drives sheep-farming from the field, and, on the other
hand, the town democracy will adopt a tone of manly indepen-
dence instead of one of brag and bluster, when education
makes them that which at present they are not — the equals of
the wealthy farmers.

It has been justly pointed out that one of the worst dangers
of democracy is the crushing influence of public opinion upoit
individuality, and many who have written upon America have
assumed that the tendency has already shown itself there. I
had during my stay in the United States arrived at the contrary
opinion, and come to believe that in no country in the world
is eccentricity, moral and religious, so ripe as in America, in no
country individuality more strong ; but ascribing to intermix-
ture of foreign blood this apparently abnormal departure from
the assumed democratic shape of society, I looked forward to
the prospect of seeing the overwhelming force of the opinion of
the majority exhibited in all its hideousness in the democratic
colonies. I was as far from discovering the monster as I had
been in America, for I soon found that, although there may be
little intellectual unrest in Australia, there is marvellous variety
of manners.

There is in our colonies no trace of that multiplication of
creeds which characterises America, and which is said to be
everywhere the result of the abolition of Establishments. In
Victoria, eighty per cent, of the whites belong to either Epis-
copalians, Catholics, or Presbyterians, and almost all of the
remainder to the well-known English Churches; nothing is
heard of such sects as the hundreds that have sprung up in
New England — Hopkinsians, Universalists, Osgoodites, Roger-
en es, Come-Outers, Non-Resistants, and the like. The Austra-
lian democrat likes to pray as his father prayed before him, and
is strongly conservative in his ecclesiastic affairs. It may be
the absence in Australia of enthusiastic religion which accounts
for the want among the country folk of the peculiar gentleness
of manner which distinguishes the farmer in America. Climate
may have its effect upon the voice; the influence of the

.l CdLOtftAt bMOCilACY. jai

Puritan and Quaker in the early history of the thirteen States,
when manners were moulded and the national life shapeJ for
good or harm, may have permanently affected the descendants
of the early settlers ; but everywhere in America I noticed that
the most perfect dignity and repose of manner was found in
districts where the passionate religious systems had their
strongest hold.

There is no trace in the colonies at present of that love for
general ideas which takes America away from England in
philosophy, and sets her with the Latin and Celtic races on the
side of France. The tendency is said to follow on democracy,
but it would be better said that democracy is itself one of these
general ideas. Democracy in the colonies is at present an
accident, and nothing more; it rests upon no basis of reasoning,
but upon a fact. The first settlers were active, bustling men ot
fairly even rank or wealth, none of whom could brook the
leadership of any other. The only way out of the difficulty was
the adoption of the rule, "All of us to be equal, and the majority
to govern ;" but there is no conception of the nature of demo-
cracy, as the unfortunate Chinese have long since discovered.

Democracy cannot always remain an accident in Australia :
where once planted, it never fails to fix its roots ; but even in
America its growth has been extremely slow. There is at
present in Victoria and New South Wales a general admission
among the men of the existence of equality of conditions, to-
gether with a perpetual rebellion on the part of their wives to
defeat democracy, and to re-introduce the old "colonial court "
society, and resulting class divisions. The consequence of this
distinction is that the women are mostly engaged in elbowing
their way ; while among their husbands there is no such thing
as the pretending to a style, a culture, or a wealth which the
pretender does not possess, for the reason that no male colonist
admits the possibility of the existence of a social superior.
Like the American " democrat," the Australian will admit that
there may be any number of grades below him, so long as you
allow that he is at the top ; but no republican can be stauncher
in the matter of his own equality with the best

There is no sign that in Australia any more than in America
there will spring up a centre of opposition to the dominant

jn CXEATElt BRlTATtf. £citAr. V.

majority; but there is as little evidence that the majority will
even unwittingly abuse its power. It is the fashion to say tha<
for a State to be intellectually great and noble, there must be
within it a nucleus of opposition to the dominant principles of
the time and place, and that the best and noblest minds, the
intellects the most seminal, have invariably belonged to men
who formed part of such a group. It may be doubted whether
this assumed necessity for opposition to the public will is not
characteristic of a terribly imperfect state of society and govern-
ment. It is chiefly because the world has never had experience
of a national life at once throbbing with the pulse of the whole
people, and completely tolerant not only in law but in opinion
of sentiments the most divergent from the views of the majority
— firm in the pursuit of truths already grasped, but ready to
seize with avidity upon new ; gifted with a love of order, yet
prepared to fit itself to shifting circumstances — that men con-
tinue to look with complacency upon the enormous waste of
intellectual power that occurs when a germ of truth such as that
contained in the doctrines of the Puritans finds development
and acceptance only after centuries have passed.

Australia will start unclogged by slavery to try tlv« experi-
ment for the worl.L

CHAPTER VI.

PROTECTION.*

THE greatest of all democratic stumbling-blocks is said to be
Protection.

" Encourage native industry !" the colonial shopkeepers
write up ; " Show your patriotism, and buy colonial goods !" is
painted in huge letters on a shop-front at Castlemaine. In
England, some unscrupulous traders, we are told, write " From
Paris" over their English goods, but such dishonesty in Victoria
takes another shape; there we have " Warranted colonial made"
placed over imported wares, for many will pay a higher price
for a colonial product confessedly not more than equal to the
foreign, such is the rage for Native Industry, and the hatred
of the "Antipodean doctrine of Free Trade."

Many former colonists who live at home persuade themselves,
and unfortunately persuade also the public in England, that the
Protectionists are weak in the colonies. So far is this from
being the case in either Victoria or New South Wales, that in
the former colony I found that in the Lower House the Free
Traders formed but three-elevenths of the Assembly, and in
New South Wales the pastoral tenants of the Crown might be
said to stand alone in their support of Free Trade. Some of
the squatters go so far as to declare that none of the public
men of the colonies really believe in the advantages of Protec-
tion, but that they dishonestly accept the principle, and under-
take to act upon it when in- office, in order to secure the votes
of an ignorant majority of labourers, who are themselves con-
vinced that Protection means high wages.

* At the time of the appearance of " Greater Britain," this chapter was
•properly understood as a mere statement by a Free Trader of the views held
by Colonial Protectionists. It was afterwards inis-rcad to be a defence 61

Protectionist views.

Y 2

314 GREATER BlttTAtfr. COUP, n

It would seem as though we Free Traders had become
nearly as bigoted in favour of Free Trade as our former
opponents were in favour of Protection. Just as they used to
say " We are right ; why argue the question ?" so now, in face
of the support of Protection by all the greatest minds in
America, all the first statesmen of the Australias, we tell the
New England and the Australian politicians that we will not
discuss Protection with them, because there can be no two
views about it among men of intelligence and education. We
will hear no defence of " national lunacy," we say.

If, putting aside our prejudices, we consent to argue with an
Australian or American Protectionist, we find ourselves in
difficulties. All the ordinary arguments against the compelling
people by Act of Parliament to consume a dearer or inferior-
article are admitted as soon as they are urged. If you attempt
to prove that Protection is bolstered up by those whose private
interests it subserves, you are shown the shrewd Australian
diggers and the calculating Western farmers in America — men
whose pocket interest is wholly opposed to Protection, and who
yet, almost to a man, support it. A digger at Ballarat defended
Protection to me in this way : he said he knew that under a
protective tariff he had to pay dearer than would otherwise be
the case for his jacket and his moleskin trousers ; but that he
preferred to do this, as by so doing he aided in building up in
the colony such trades as the making-up of clothes, in which
his brother and other men physically too weak to be diggers
could gain an honest living. In short, the self-denying Protec-
tion of the Australian diggers is of the character of that which
would be accorded to the glaziers of a town by the citizens, if
they broke their windows to find their fellow-townsmen work :
" We know we lose, but men must live," they say. At the same
time they deny that the loss will be enduring. The digger tells
you that he should not mind a continuing pocket loss, but that,
as a matter of fact, that which in an old country would be
pocket loss, in a new country such as his only comes to this —
that it forms a check on immigration. Wages being $s. a day
in Victoria and y. a day in England, workmen would naturally
flock into Victoria from England until wages in Melbourne fell
to 3*. 6<f. or 4^. Here comes in prohibition, and by increasing

. T:.] PROTECTION. 37$

the cost of living in Victoria, and cutting into the Australian
handicraftsman's margin of luxuries, diminishes the temptation
to immigration, and consequently the influx itself.

The Western farmers in America defend Protection upon
far wider grounds : they admit that Free Trade would conduce
to the most rapid possible peopling of their country with foreign
immigrants; but this, they say, is an eminently undesirable
conclusion. They prefer to pay a heavy tax in the increases
price of everything they consume, and in the greater cost ot
labour, rather than see their country denationalized by a rush
of Irish or Germans, or their political institutions endangered
by a still further increase in the size and power of New York.
One old fellow said to me : "I don't want the Americans in
1900 to be 200 millions, but I want them to be happy."

The American Protectionists point to the danger that their
countrymen would run unless town kept pace with country
population. Settlers would pour off to the west, and drain the
juices of the fertile land by cropping it year after year, without
fallow, without manure, and then, as the land became in a few
years exhausted, would have nowhere whither to turn to find
the fertilizers which the soil would need. Were they to depend
upon agriculture alone, they would sweep in a wave across the
land, leaving behind them a worn out, depopulated, jungle-
covered soil, open to future settlement, when its lands should
have recovered their fertility by some more provident race.
The coastlands of most ancient countries are exhausted, densely
bushed, and uninhabited. In this fact lies the power of our
sailor race : crossing the seas, we occupy the coasts, and step
by step work our way into the upper country, where we should
not have attempted to show ourselves had the ancient popula-
tion resisted us upon the shores. In India, in Ceylon, we met
the hardy race of the highlands and interior only after we had
already fixed ourselves upon the coast, with a safe basis for our
supply. The fate that these countries have met is that which
colonists expect to be their own, unless the protective system
be carried out in its entirety. In like manner the American!
point to the ruin of Virginia, and if you urge "Slavery,*
answer, " Slavery is but agriculture."

Those who speak of the selfishness of the Protectionists as

326 GREATER BRITAIN. [CIIAI>. vi.

a whole can never have taken the trouble to examine into the
arguments by which Protection is supported in Australia and
America. In these countries, Protection is no mere national
delusion ; it is a system deliberately adopted with open eyes as
one conducive to the country's welfare, in spite of objections
known to all — in spite of pocket losses that come home to all.
If it be, as we in England believe, a folly, it is at all events a
sublime one, full of self-sacrifice, illustrative of a certain nobility
in the national heart. The Australian diggers and Western
farmers in America are setting a grand example to the world of
self-sacrifice for a national object ; hundreds and thousands of
rough men are content to live — they and their families — upon
less than they might otherwise enjoy, in order that the condition
of the mass of their countrymen may continue raised above
that of their brother toilers in Old England. Their manufac-
tures are beginning now to stand alone, but hitherto, without
Protection, the Americans would have had no cities but sea-
ports. By picturing to ourselves England dependent upon the
city of London, upon Liverpool, and Hull, and Bristol, we shall
see the necessity the Western men are now under of setting off
Pittsburg against New York and Philadelphia. In short, the
tendency, according to the Western farmers, of Free Trade, in
the early stages of a country's existence, is to promote universal
centralization, to destroy local centres and the commerce they
create, to so tax the farmer with the cost of transport to distant
markets, that he must grow wheat and corn continuously, and
cannot but exhaust his soil. With markets so distant, the
richest forest lands are not worth clearing, and settlement
sweeps over the country, occupying the poorer lands, and then
abandoning them once more.

Protection in the colonies and America is to a great degree a
revolt against steam. Steam is making the world all one;
steatn " corrects " differences in the price of labour. When
steam brings all races into competition with each other, the
Cheaper races will extinguish the dearer, till at last some one
people will inhabit the whole earth. Coal remains the only
power, as it will probably always be cheaper to carry the manu-
factured goods than to carry tne coal.
: Time after time I have heard the Western farmers draw imagi-

CHAP, vi.] PROTECTION. 337

mry pictures of the state of America if Free Trade should gair*
the day, and ask of what avail it is to say that Free Trade and
free circulation of people are profitable to the pocket, if they
destroy the national existence of America ; what good to point
out the gain of weight to their purses, in the face of the destruc-
tion of their religion, their language, and their Saxon institutions.

One of the greatest of the thinkers of America defended
Protection to me on the following grounds : That without Pro-
tection, America could at present have but few and limited
manufactures. That a nation cannot properly be said to exist
as such, unless she has manufactures of many kinds ; for men
are born, some with a turn to agriculture, some with a turn to
mechanics ; and if you force the mechanic-by-nature to become
a farmer, he will make a bad farmer, and the nation will lose
the advantage of all his power and invention. That the whole
of the possible employments of the human race are in a
measure necessary employments — necessary to the making up
of a nation. That every concession to Free Trade cuts out of
all chance of action some of the faculties of the American
national mind, and, in so doing, weakens and debases it. That
each and every class of workers is of such importance to the
country, that we must make any sacrifice necessary to maintain
them in full work. " The national mind is manifold," he said ,
" and if you do not keep up every branch of employment in
every district, you waste the national force. If we were to
remain a purely agricultural people, land would fall into fewer
and fewer hands, and our people become more and more
brutalised as the years rolled on."

It must not be supposed that Protection is entirely defended
upon these strange new grounds. "Save us from the pauper-
labour of Europe," is the most recent as well as the oldest of
Protectionist cries. The Australians and Americans say, that
by working women at \s. a day in the mines in Wales, and by
generally degrading all labourers under the rank of highly-
skilled artisans, the British keep wages so low, that, in spite of
the cost of carriage, they can almost invariably undersell the
colonists and Americans in American and Australian markets.
This state of degradation and poverty nothing can force them
to introduce into their own countries, and, on the other hand.

p8 GRE.(TEli BRITAIN. [CIIAI-. vi.

they consider manufactures necessary for the national purpose
alluded to before. The alternative is protection.

The most unavoidable of all the difficulties of Protection — <
namely, that no human government can ever be trusted to
adjust protective taxation without corruption — is no objection
to the Prohibition which the Western Protectionists demand.
The New Englanders say — " Let us meet the English on fair
terms ;" the Western men say that they will not meet them at
all. Some of the New York Protectionists declare that their
object is merely the fostering of American manufactures until
they are able to stand alone, the United States not having at
present reached the point which had been attained by other
nations when they threw Protection to the winds. Such halting
Protectionists as these find no sympathy in Australia or the
West, although the highest of all Protectionists look forward
to the distant time when, local centres being everywhere esta-
blished, customs will be abolished on all sides, and mankind
form one family.

The chief thing to be borne in mind in discussing Protection
with an Australian or an American, is that he never thinks of
denying that under Protection he pays a higher price for his
goods than he would if he bought them from us, and that he
admits at once that he temporarily pays a tax of 15 or 20 per
cent, upon everything he buys, in order to help set his country
on the road to national unity and ultimate wealth. Without
Protection, the American tells you, there will be commercial
New York, sugar-growing Louisiana, the corn-growing North-
West, but no America. Protection alone can give him a united
country. When we talk about things being to the advantage or
disadvantage of a country, the American Protectionist asks
what you mean. Admitting that all you say against Protection
may be true, he says that he had sooner see America sup-
porting a hundred millions independent of the remainder of
the world than two hundred millions dependent for clothes upon
the British. " You, on the other hand," he says, "would prefer
our custom. How can we discuss the question ? The dif-
ference between us is radical, and we have no base on which to
build.'

It is a common dpctrine m the colonies of England that §

CHAP, vi.] PROTECTION. 329

na^on cannot be called " independent" if it his to cry out to
another for supplies of necessaries ; that true national existence
is first attained when the country becomes capable of supplying
to its own citizens those goods without which they cannot exist
in the state of comfort which they have already reached. Poli
tical is apt to follow upon commercial dependency, they say.

The question of Protection is bound up with the wider one
of whether we are to love our fellow-subjects, our race, or the
world at large ; whether we are to pursue our country's good at
the expense of other nations ? There is a growing belief in
England, that the noblest philosophy is to deny the existence
of the moral right to benefit ourselves by harming others ; that
love of mankind must in time replace love of race as that has
in part replaced narrow patriotism and love of self. It would
seem that our Free Trade system lends itself better to thes2
wide modern sympathies than does Protection. On the othe!
hand, it may be argued that, if every State consults the good of
its own citizens, we shall, by the action of all nations, obtain
the desired happiness of the whole world, and this with rapidity,
from the reason that every country understands its own interests
better than it does those of its neighbour. As a rule, the
colonists hold that they should not protect themselves against
the sister-colonies, but only against the outer world ; and while
I was in Melbourne, an arrangement was made with respect to
the border customs between Victoria and New South Wales ;
but this is at present the only step that has been taken towards
inter-colonial Free Trade.

It is passing strange that Victoria should be noted for the
eagerness with which her people seek protection. Possessed of
little coal, they appear to be attempting artificially to create an
industry which, owing to this sad lack of fuel, must languish
from the moment that it is let alone. Sydney coal sells in
Melbourne at thirty shillings a ton ; at the pit's mouth at New-
castle, New South Wales, it fetches only seven or eight shillings.
With regard, however, to the making-up of native produce, the
question in the case of Victoria is merely this : Is it cheaper to
carry the wool to the coal, and then the woollen goods back
again, than to carry the coal to the wool ? and as long as
Victoria can continue to export wheat, so that the coal-ships

330 GREATER BRIT A IN. (CHAP. vi.

may not want freight, wool manufactures may prosper in.
Victoria.

The Victorians naturally deny that the cost of coal has much
to do with the question. The French manufacturers, they point
out, with dearer coal, but with cheaper labour, have in many
branches of trade beaten the English out of common markets,
but then under Protection there is no chance of cheap labour
in Victoria.

Writing for the Englishmen of Old England, it is not necessary
for me to defend Free Trade by any arguments. As far as we
in our island are concerned, it is so manifestly to the pocket
interest of almost all of us, and at the same time, on account of
the minuteness of our territory, so little dangerous politically,
that for Britain there can be no fear of a deliberate relapse into
Protection.

. The American argument in favour of Prohibition is in the
main, it will be seen, political; the economical objections being
admitted,, but outweighed. Our action in the matter of our
postal contracts, and in the case of the Factory Acts, at all
events shows that we are not ourselves invariably averse to
distinguish between the political and the economical aspect of
certain questions.

My duty has been to chronicle what is said and thought upon
the matter in our various plantations. One thing at least is
clear — that even if the opinions I have recorded be as ridiculous
when applied to Australia or America as they would be when
applied to England, they are not supported by a selfish clique,
but rest upon the generosity and self-sacrifice of a majority of
the population*

* Since this chapter was written New South Wales has adopted Free
Tr de.

33*

CHAPTER VII.
LABOUR.

SIDE by side with the unselfish Protectionism of the diggei's,
there flourishes among the artisans of the Austrnlias a self-
interested desire for non-intercourse with the outside world.

In America, the working men, themselves almost without
exception immigrants, though powerful in various States
from holding the balance of parties, have never as yet been
able to make their voices heard in the Federal Congress. In
the chief Australian colonies, on the other hand, the artisans
have more than any other class, the possession of political
power. Throughout the world the grievance of the working
classes lies in the fact that, while trade and profits have increased
enormously within the last few years, true as distinguished
from nominal wages have not risen. It is even doubtful whether
the American or British handicraftsman can now live in such
comfort as he could make sure of a few years back : it is certain
that agricultural labourers in the south of England are worse off
than they were ten years ago, although the depreciation of gold
prevents us from accurately gauging their true position. In
Victoria and New South Wales, and in the States of Wisconsin,
Illinois, and Missouri, where the artisans possess some share of
power, they have set about the attempt to remedy by law the
grievance under which they suffer. In the American States,
.where the suppression of immigration seems almost impossible,
their interference takes the shape of eight-hour bills, and exclu-
sion of coloured labourers. There is no trades-union in America
which will admit to membership a Chinaman, or even a mulatto.
In Victoria and New South Wales, however, it is not difficult
(juietly to put a check upon the importation of foreign labour;

332 GRFlT't't' BRITAIN. [CITAP. vn.

The vast distance from Europe makes the unaided immigration
of artisans extremely rare ; and since the democrats have beer
in power the funds for assisted immigration have been withheld,
and the Chinese influx all but forbidden, while manifestoes
against the ordinary European immigration have repeatedly
been published at Sydney by the Council of the Associated
Trades.

The Sydney operatives have always taken a leading part in
opposition to immigration, from the time when they founded
the Anti-Transportation Committee up to the present day.
In 1847, a natural and proper wish to prevent the artificial de-
pression of wages was at the bottom of the anti-transportation
movement, although the arguments made use of in the petition
to the Queen were of the most general character ; and Sydney
mechanics, many of them free immigrants themselves, say that
there is no difference of principle between the introduction of
free or assisted immigrants and that of convicts.

If we look merely to the temporary results of the policy of
the Australian artisans, we shall find it hard to deny that their
acts are calculated momentarily to increase their material pros-
perity; so far they may be selfish, but they are not blind. Ad-
mitting that wages depend on the ratio of capital to population,
the Australians assert that, with them, population increases fastei
than capital, and that hindering immigration will restore the
balance. Prudential checks on population are useless, they say,
in face of Irish immigration. At the same time, it is clear that,
from the discouragement of immigration and limitation to eight
hours of the daily toil, there results an exceptional scarcity of
labour, which cramps the development of the country, and causes
a depression in trade which must soon diminish the wage-fund,
and re-act upon the working men. It is unfortunately the fact,
that colonial artisans do not sufficiently bear in mind the dis-
tinction between real and nominal wages, but are easily caught
by the show of an extra few shillings a week, even though the
purchasing power of each shilling be diminished by the change.
When looked into, "higher wages" often mean that the labourer,
instead of starving upon ten shillings a week, is to starve upon
twenty.

As regards the future, contrasted with the temporary condition

our. vuj LABOU&. j5j

of the Australian labour;r, there is no disguising the fact that
mere exclusion of immigration will not in the long run avail
him. It might, of course, be urged that immigration is, even in
America, a small matter by the side of the natural increase of
the people, and that to shut out the immigrant is but one of
many checks to population j but in Australia the natural increase
is not so great as in a young country might be expected. The
men so largely outnumber the women in Australia, that even
early marriages and large families cannot make the birth-rate
very high, and fertile land being at present still to be obtained
at first hand, the new agricultural districts swallow up the natural
increase of the population. Still, important as is immigration
at this moment, ultimately through the influx of women — to
which the democrats are not opposed — or, more slowly, by the
effort of nature to restore the balance of the sexes, the rate of
natural increase will become far greater in Australia. U Itimately,
there can be no doubt, if the Australian labourer continues to
retain his present standard of comfort, prudential checks upon
the birth of children will be requisite to maintain the present
ratio of capital to population.

Owing to the comparatively high prices fixed for agricultural
land in the three south-eastern colonies of Australia, the abun-
dance of unoccupied tracts has not hitherto had that influence
on wages in Australia which it appears to have exercised in
America; but under the democratic amendments of the existing
free selection system, wages will probably again rise in the
colonies, to be once more reduced by immigration, or, if the
democracy gains the day, more slowly lowered by the natural
increase of the population.

In places where competition has reduced the rewaid of labour
to the lowest amount consistent with the efficiency of the work,
compulsory restriction of the hours of toil must evidently be
an unmixed benefit to the labourer, until carried to the point at
which it destroys the trade in which he is engaged. In America
and Australia, however, where the labourer has a margin of
luxuries which can be cut down, and where the manufacturers
are still to some extent competing with European rivals, restric-
tion of hours puts them at a disadvantage with the capitalists of
the old world, and, reducing their profits, tends also to diminish

?34 GREATER BRITAIN. (CHAP. vti.

the wage-fund, and ultimately to decrease the wages of their
men. The colonial action in this matter may, nevertheless, like
all infringements of general economic laws, be justified by proof
of the existence of a higher necessity for breaking than for ad-
hering to the rule of freedom. Our own Factory Acts, we
should remember, were undoubtedly calculated to diminish the
production of the country.

Were the American and Australian handicraftsmen to become
sufficiently powerful to combine strict Protection, or prohibition
of foreign intercourse, with reduction of hours of toil, they
would ultimately drive capital out of their countries, and either
lower wages, or else diminish the population by checking both
immigration and natural increase. Here, as in the consideration
of Protection, we come to that bar to all discussion, the question,
" What is a nation's good ?" It is at least doubtful whether in
England we do not attach too great importance to the con-
tinuance of nations in " the progressive state." Unrestricted
immigration may destroy the literature, the traditions, the
nationality itself of the invaded country, and it is a question
whether these ideas are not worth preserving even at a cost of
a few figures in the returns of imports, exports, and population.
A country in which Free Trade principles have been carried to
their utmost logical development must be cosmopolitan and
nationless, and for such a state of things to exist universally
without danger to civilisation the world is not yet prepared.

" Know-nothingism " in America, as what is now styled
" native Americanism " was once called — a form of the protest
against the exaggeration of Free Trade — was founded by han-
dicraftsmen, and will in all probability find its main support
within their ranks whenever the time for its inevitable resusci-
tation shall arrive. That there is honest pride of race at the
bottom of the agitation no one can doubt who knows the history
of the earlier Know-nothing movement; but class interest
happens to point the same way as does the instinct of the race.
The refusal of political privileges to immigrants will have some
tendency to check the flow of immigration ; at all events, it
will check the self-assartion of the immigrants. That which
does this leaves, too, the control of wages more within the
hands of actual labourers, and prevents the European labourers

CJtAr. Vlt.j LABOUR. J35:

of the eleventh hour coming in to share the heightened wages
for which the American hands have struck and suffered misery
and want. No consistent republican can object to the making
ten or twenty years' residence in the United States the condition
for citizenship of the land.

In the particular case of the Australian colonies, they are
happily separated from Ireland by seas so wide as to have a
chance of preserving a distinct nationality, such as America
can scarcely hope for: only 1500 persons have come to New
South Wales, unassisted, in the last five years. The burthen of
proof lies upon those who propose to destroy the rising nation-
ality by assisting in the importation of a mixed multitude of
negroes, Chinamen, Hill coolies, Irish, and Germans, in order
that the imports and exports of Victoria and New South Wales
may be increased, and that there may be a larger number of
so-called Victorians and New South Welsh to live in misery.

Owing to the fostering of immigration by the aristocratic
government, the population of Queensland had, in 1866, quad-
rupled itself since 1860; but, even were the other colonies
inclined to follow the example of their northern sister, they
could not do so with success. New South Wales and Tasmania
might import colonists by the thousand, but they would be no
sooner landed than they would run to Queensland, or sail to
the New Zealand diggings, just as the " Canadian immigrants "
flock into the United States.

That phase of the labour question to which I have last
alluded seems to shape itself into the question, " Shall the
labourer always and everywhere be encouraged or permitted to
carry his labour to the best market ?" The Australians answer
that they are willing to admit that additional hands in a new
country mean additional wealth, but that there is but little
good in our preaching moral restraint to them if European
immigration is to be encouraged, Chinese allowed. The only
effect, they say, that self-control can have is that of giving such
children as they rear Chinamen or Irishmen to struggle against
instead of brothers. It is hopeless to expect that the Australian
workmen will retain their present standard of comfort if an
influx of dark-skinned handicraftsmen is permitted.

Some ten or even fewer years ago, we free-traders of the

. m

Western woild, first then coming to know some little about the
kingdoms of the further East, paused a moment in our daily
toil to lift to the skies our hands in lamentation at the blind
exclusiveness which we were told had for ages past held sway
within the council-chambers of Pekin. No words were too
strong for our new-found laughing-stock ; China became for us
what we are to Parisian journalists — a Boeotia redeemed only
by a certain eccentricity of folly. This vast hive swarming
with two hundred million working bees was said to find its interest
in shutting out the world, punishing with death the outgoing
and incoming of the people. " China for the Chinese," was
the common war-cry of the rulers and the ruled ; " Self-
contained has China been, and prospered ; self-contained she
shall continue," the favourite maxim of their teachers. Nothing
could be conceived nobler than the scorn which mingled with
half-doubting incredulity and with Pharisaic thanking of heaver
that we were not as they, when the blindness of these outei
barbarians of " Gog and Magog land " was drawn for us by
skilful pens, and served out with all the comments that self-
complacency could suggest. A conversion in the future was
foretold, however ; this Chinese infirmity of vision was not to
last for ever; the day would come when Studentships in
Political Economy would be founded in Pekin, and Ricardo
take the place of Cou-fou-chow in Thibetian schools. A con-
version has taken place of late, but not that hoped for ; or, if
it be a conversion consistent with the truths of Economic
Science, it has taken a strange shape. The wise men of
Canton may be tempted, perhaps, to think that it is we who
have learnt the wisdom of the sages, and been brought back
into the fold of the great master. Chinese immigration is
heavily taxed in California ; taxed to the point of prohibition
in Victoria ; and forbidden under heavy penalties in Louisiana
and other ex-rebel States.

The Chinaman is pushing himself to the fore wherever his
presence is allowed. We find Chinese helmsmen and quarter-
masters in the service of the Messageries and Oriental com-
panies receiving twice the wages paid to Indian lascars. We
hear of the importation of Chinese labourers into India for
railway and for drainage works. The Chinaman has great vitality,

CHAP, vnj LABOUR. 337

Of the cheap races the Mongol is the most pushing, the
likeliest to conquer in the fight, It would almost seem as
though we were wrong in our common scales of preference;
far from right in our use of the terms " superior " and " inferior "
races.

A well-taught white man can outreason or can overreach a
well-taught Chinaman or negro. But under some climatic
conditions, the negro can outwork the white man ; under
almost all conditions, the Chinaman can outwork him. Where
this is the case, is it not the Chinaman or the negro that should
be called the better man ? Call him what we may, will he not
prove his superiority by working the Englishman off the soil ? In
Florida and Mississippi, the black is cer'/unly the better man.

Many Victorians, even those who respect and admire the
Chinese, are in favour of the imposition of a tax upon the
yellow immigrants, in order to prevent the destruction of the
rising Australian nationality. They fear that otherwise they
will live to see the English element swamped in the Asiatic
throughout Australia. It is not certain that we may not some
day have to encounter a similar danger in Old England.

It will be seen from the account thus given of the state of the
labour question in Australia, that the colonial handicraftsmen
stand towards those of the world in much the same relative
position as that held by the members of a trade-union towards
the other workmen of the same trade. The limitation of
immigration has the same effect as the limitation of
apprentices in a single trade in England. It is easy to say that
the difference between fellow-countryman and foreigner is
important ; that while it is an unfairness to all English workmen
that English hatters should limit apprentices, it is not
unfair to English hatters that Australian hatters should limit
their apprentices. For my own part, I am inclined to think
that, fair or unfair — and we have no international moral rule to
decide the question — we might at least say to Australia that,
while she throws upon us the chief expenses of her govern-
rrent and defence,* she is hardly in a position to refuse to aid
our emigrants.

* All the naval charges (except part cf those of Victoria), all consular
find diplomatic charges, etc.

j38 GKEATER BRITAIN. ' [CHAP. vn.

Day by day, the labour question in its older aspects becomes
of less and less importance. The relationship of master and
servant is rapidly dying the death ; co-operative farming and
industrial partnerships must supersede it everyv/here at no
distant date. In these systems we shall find the remedy
against the decline of trade with which the English-speaking
countries of the earth are threatened.

The existing system of labour is anti-democratic ; it is at once
productive of and founded on the existence of an aristocracy of
capital and a servitude of workmen ; and our English demo-
cracies cannot afford that half their citizens should be dependent
labourers. If manufactures are to be consistent with demo-
cracy, they must be carried on in shops in which each man shall
be at once capitalist and handicraftsman. Such institutions are
already in existence in Massachusetts, in Illinois, in Pennsyl-
vania, and in Sydney ; while at Troy, in New York State, there
is a great iron-foundry, owned from roof to floor by the men
who work in it. It is not enough that the workman should
share in the profits. The change which, continuing through the
Middle Ages into the present century, has at last everywhere
converted the relation of lord and slave into that of master
and hireling, is already giving place to the silent revolution
which is steadily substituting for this relationship of capital and
labour that of a perfect marriage, in which the labourer and
the capitalist shall be one.

Under this system there can be no strikes, no petty trickery,
no jealousy, no waste of time. Each man's individual interest
is coincident with that of all. Where the labour is that of a
brotherhood, the toil becomes ennobled. Were industrial
partnerships a new device, their inventor would need no monu-
ment ; his would be found in the future history of the race. As
it is, this latest advance of Western civilization is but a return
to the earliest and noblest form of labour ; the Arabs, the Don
Cossacks, the Maori tribes, are all co-operative farmers ; it is
the mission of the English race to apply the ancient principle
to manufactures.

339

CHAPTER VIII.

WOMAN.

IN one respect, Victoria stands at once sadly behind and strangely
in advance of other democratic countries. Women, or at least
some women, vote at the Lower House elections, but, on the
other hand, the legal position of the sex is almost as inferior to
that of man as it is in England or the East.

At an election held some few years ago, female ratepayers
voted everywhere throughout Victoria, Upon examination, it
was found that a new Registration Act had directed the rate-
books to be used as a basis for the preparation of the electoral
lists, and that women householders had been legally put on the
register, although the intention of the Legislature was not
expressed, and the question of female voting had not been
raised during the debates. Another instance, this, of the
singular way in which in truly British countries reforms are
brought about by accident, and, when once become facts, are
allowed to stand. There is no more sign of general adhesion
in Australia than in England to the doctrine which asserts that
women, as well as men, being interested in good government,
should have a voice in the selection of that government to
which they are forced to submit.

As far as concerns their social position, women are as badly
off in Australia as in England, Our theory of marriage — which
has been tersely explained thus : " the husband and wife are
one, and the husband is that one" — rules as absolutely at the
antipodes as it does in Yorkshire. I was daily forced to
remember the men of Kansas and Missouri, and the widely
different view they take of these matters to that of the
Australians. As they used to tell me, they are impatient of
seeing their women ranked with " lunatics and idiots " in the
catalogue of incapacities. They are unable to see that women
^re much better represented by their male friends than were the

Z 2

J4o GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. vin.

Southern blacks by their owners or overseers. They believe
that the process of election would not be more purified by
female emancipation than would the character of the Parliaments
elected.

The Kansas people argue that if you were told that there existed
in some ideal country two great sections of a race, the members
of the one often gross, often vicious, often giving to loud talking,
to swearing, to drinking, spitting, chewing ; not infrequently
corrupt ; those of the other branch, mild, kind, quiet, pure,-
devout, with none of the habitual vices of the first-named sect
— if you were told that one of these branches was alone to elect
rulers and to govern, you would at once say, " Tell us where
this happy country is that basks in the rule of such a god-like
pecple ?" " Stop a minute," says your informant, " it is the
creatures I described first — the men who rule ; the others are
only women, poor silly fools — imperfect men, I assure you ;
nothing more."

It is somewhat the fashion to say that the so-called " extra-
vagances " of the Kansas folk and other American Western
men arise from the extraordinary position given to their women
by the disproportion of their sexes. Now, in all the Australian
colonies the men vastly outnumber the women, yet the dispro-
portion has none of those results which have been attributed
to it by some writers on America. In New South Wales, the
sexes are as 250,000 to 200,000,* in Victoria 370,000 to 280,000
in New Zealand 130,000 to 80,000, in Queensland 60,000 to
40,000, in Tasmania 50,000 to 40,000, in West Australia 14,000
to 8000, and 90,000 to 80,000 in South Australia. In all our
Southern colonies together, there are a million of men to only
three-quarters of a million of women; yet with this disproportion,
which far exceeds that in Western America, not only have the
women failed to acquire any great share of power, political or
social, but they are content to occupy a position not relatively
superior to that held by them at home.

The " Sewing Clubs " of the war-time are at the bottom of a
good deal of the " woman movement " in America. At the
time of greatest need, the ladies of the Northern States formed
themselves into associations for the supply of lint, of linen, and

* All these figures are now too small, but the disproportion still continues,

CHAP, viri.] WOMAN. j4i

of comforts to the army : the women of a district would meet
together daily in some large room, and sew, ami chat while
they were sewing.

The British section of the Teutonic race seems naturally
inclined, through the operation of its old interest-begotten pre-
judices, to rank women where Plato placed them in the
" Timaeus," along with horses and draught cattle ; or to think
of them much as he did when he said that all the brutes
derived their origin from man by a series of successive degra-
dations, of which the first was from man to woman. There is
however, one strong reason why the English should, in America,
have laid aside their prejudices upon this point, retaining them
in Australia, where the conditions are not the same. Among
farming peoples, whose women do not work regularly in the
field, the woman, to whom falls the household and superior
work, is better off than she is among town-dwelling peoples.
The Americans are mainly a farming, the Australians and
British mainly a town-dwelling, people. The absence in all
sections of our race of regular woman labour in the field seems
to be a remnant of the high estimation in which women were
held by our German ancestry. In Britain we have, until the
last few years, been steadily retrograding upon this point.

It is a serious question how far the natural prejudice of the
English mind against the labour of what we call " inferior
races " will be found to extend to half the superior race itself.
How will English labourers receive the inevitable competition
of women in many of their fields ? Woman is at present starved,
if she works at all, and does not rest content in dependence
upon some man, by the terrible lowness of wages in every
employment open to her, and this low rate of wages is itself
the direct result of the fewness of the occupations which society
allows her. Where a man can see a hundred crafts in which
he may engage, a woman will perhaps be permitted to find ten.
A hundred times as many women as there is room for invade
each of this small number of employments. In the Australian
labour-field the prospects of women are no better than they are
in Europe, and during my residence in Melbourne the Council
of the Associated Trades passed a resolution to the effect that
nothing could justify the employment of women in any kind
of productive labour.

GREATER BRITATV [OiUP.IZ.

CHAPTER IX.
VICTORIAN PORTS.

ALL allowance being made for the great number of wide
roads for trade, there is still a singular absence of traffic in the
Melbourne streets. Trade may be said to be transacted only
upon paper in the city, while the tallow, grain, and wool, which
form the basis of Australian commerce, do not pass through
Melbourne, but skirt it, and go by railway to Williamstown,
Sandridge, and Geelong.

Geelong, once expected to rival Melbourne, and become the
first port of all Australia, I found grass-grown and half deserted,
with but one vessel lying at her wharf. At Williamstown, a
great fleet of first-class ships was moored alongside the pier.
When the gold-find at Ballarat took place, Geelong rose last as
the digging port, but her citizens chose to complete the railway
line to Melbourne instead of first opening that to Ballarat, and
so lost all the up-country trade. Melbourne, having once
obtained the lead, soon managed to control the Legislature, and
grants were made for the Echuca Railroad, which tapped the
Murray, and brought the trade of Upper Queensland and New
South Wales down to Melbourne, in the interest of the ports
of Williamstown and Sandridge. Not content with ruining
Geelong, the Melbourne men have set themselves to ridicule it.
One of their stories goes that the Geelong streets bear such a
fine crop of grass, that a free selector has applied to have them
surveyed and sold to him, under the 42nd clause of the New
Land Act. Another story tells how a Geelongee lately died, and
went to heaven. Peter, opening the door to his knock, asked,
" Where from ? " " Geelong." " Where ? " said Peter. " Gee-
long." " There's no such place," replied the Apostle. " In

CHAP. IX.] V1CTORTAN PORTS. 34J

Victoria," cried the colonist. M Fetch Ham's Australian Atlas,"
called Peter; and when the map was brought and the spot
shown to him, he replied, " Well, I beg your pardon, but I
really never had any one here from that place before."

If Geelong be standing1 still, which in a colony is the same
as rapid decline would be with us, the famed wheat country
around it seems as inexhaustible as it ever was. The whole of
the Barrabool Range, from Ceres to Mount Moriac, is one great
golden waving sheet, save where it is broken by the stunted
claret-vineyards. Here and there I came upon a group of the
little daughters of the German vine-dressers, tending and trench-
ing the plants, with the round eyes, rosy cheeks, and shiny
pigtails of their native Rudesheim all flourishing beneath the
Southern Cross.

The colonial vines are excellent; better, indeed, than the
growths of California, which, however, they resemble in general
character. The wines are naturally all Burgundies, and colonial
imitations of claret, port, and sherry are detestable, and the
hocks but little better. The Albury Hermitage is a better wine
than can be bought in Europe at its price, but in some places
this wine is sold as Murray Burgundy, while the dealers foist
horrible stuff upon you under the name of Hermitage. Of the
wines of New South Wales, White Dallwood is a fair Sauterne,
and White Cawarra a good Chablis, while for sweet wines the
Chasselas is cheap ; and the Tokay, the Shiraz, and the still
Muscat are full of flavour. With time and care, Australia
ought to be the vineyard of the world.

North-west of Geelong, upon the summit of the foot hills
of the dividing range, lies Ballarat, the head-quarters of deep
quartz mining, and now no longer a diggers' camp, but a
graceful city, full of shady boulevards and noble buildings, and
with a stationary population of thirty thousand. My first visit
was made in the company of the prime ministers of all the
colonies, who were at Melbourne nominally for a conference,
but really to enjoy a holiday and the Intercolonial Exhibition.
With that extraordinary generosity in the spending of other
people's money which distinguishes Cabinets, the Victorian
Government placed special trains, horses, carriages, and hotels
at our disposa., the result of which was that, feted everywhere,

344 GREATER BRITAIN. (CIIAP, :x

we saw nothing, and I had to return to Ballarat in order even
to go through the mines.

In visiting Lake Learmouth and Clunes, and the mining
district on each side of Ballarat, I found myself able to discover
the date of settlement by the names of places, as one finds the
age of a London suburb by the titles of its terraces. The
dates run in a wave across the country. St. Arnaud is a town
between Ballarat and Castlemaine, and Alma lies near to it,
while Balaklava Hill is near Ballarat, where also are Raglan
and Sebastopol. Inkermann lies close to Castlemaine, and
Mount Cathcart bears the name of the general killed at the
Two-gun Battery, while the Malakhoff diggings, discovered
doubtless towards the end of the war, lie to the northward, in
the Wimmera.

Everywhere I found the interior far hotter than the coast,
but free from the sudden changes of temperature that occur in
Melbourne twice or thrice a week throughout the summer, and
are dangerous to children and to persons of weak health. After
two or three days of the hot wind, there comes a night, breath-
less, heavy, still. In the morning the sun rises, once more
fierce and red. After such a night and dawn, I have seen the
shade thermometer in the cool verandahs of the Melbourne
Club standing at 95° before ten o'clock, when suddenly the
sun and sky would change from red and brown to gold and
blue, and a merry breeze, whistling up from the ice-packs of the
South Pole and across the Antarctic seas, would lower the tem-
perature in an hour to 60° or 65°. After a few days of cold
and rain, a quiet English morning would be cut in half about
eleven by a sudden slamming of doors and whirling of dust
from the north across the town, while darkness came upon the
streets. Then was heard the cry of " Shut the windows ; here's
a hot wind," and down would go every window, barrecf and
bolted, while the oldest colonists walked out to enjoy the dry
air and healthy heat. The thick walls of the clubs and private
houses will keep out the heat for about three days ; but if, as
sometimes happens, the hot wind lasts longer, then the walls
are heated through, and the nights are hardly to be borne. Up
the country, the settlers know nothing of these changes. The
regular irregularity is peculiar to the Melbourne summer.

CHAPTER X. *
TASMANIA.

AFTER the parching heat of Australia, a visit to Tasmania was
a grateful change. Steaming along Port Dalrymple and up the
Tamar in the soft sunlight of an English afternoon, we were
able to look upwards, and enjoy the charming views of wood
and river, instead of having to stand with downcast head, as in
the blaze of the Victorian sun.

The beauty of the Tamar is of a quiet kind : its scenery like
that of the non-Alpine districts of the west coast of New
Zealand, but softer and more smiling than is that of even the
least rude portions of those islands. To one fresh from the
baked Australian plains, there is likeness between any green
and humid land and the last unparched country that he may
have seen. Still, New Zealand cannot show fresher cheeks nor
homes more cosy than those of the Tamar valley. Somerset-
shire cannot surpass the orchards of Tasmania, nor Devon
match its flowers.

The natural resemblance of Maria Van Diemen's Land (as
Tasman called it after his betrothed) to England seems to have
struck the early settlers. In sailing up the Tamar, we had on
one bank the county of Dorset, with its villages touchingly
named after those at home, according to their situations, from
its Lulworth Cove, Corfe Castle, and St. Alban's Head, round
to Abbotsbury ; and, on our right hand, Devon, with its Sid-
mouth, Exeter, and Torquay.

Hurrying through Launceston — a pretty little town, of which
the banks and post-office are models of simple architecture — •
I passed at once across the island southwards to Hobarton, the
capital. The scenery on the great convict road is not impres

346 GREATER BRITAIN fCH^r. x.

sive. The Tasmanian mountains — detached and rugged masses
of basaltic rock, from four to five thousand feet in height — are
wanting in grandeur when seen from a distance, with a fore-
ground of flat corn-land. It is disheartening, too, in an English
colony, to see half the houses shut up and deserted, and acre
upon acre of old wheat-land abandoned to mimosa scrub. The
people in these portions of the island have worked their lands
to death, and even guano seems but to galvanize them into a
momentary life. Since leaving Virginia I had seen no such
melancholy sight.

Nature is bountiful enough : in the world there is not a fairer
climate ; the gum-trees grow to 350 feet, attesting the richness
of the soil ; and the giant tree-ferns are never injured by heat,
as in Australia, nor by cold, as in New Zealand. All the fruits
of Europe are in season at the same time, and the Christmas
dessert at Hobarton often consists of five-and-twenty distinct
fresh fruits. Even more than Britain, Tasmania may be said
to present in a small area an epitome of the globe : mountain
and plain, forest and rolling prairie-land, rivers and grand
capes, and the noblest harbour in the world, all are contained
in a country the size of Ireland. It is unhappily not only in
this sense that Tasmania is the Ireland of the South.

Beautiful as is the view of Hobarton from Mount Wellington,
the spurs in the foreground clothed with a crimson carpet by a
heath-like plant ; the city nestled under the basaltic columns
of the crags — even here it is difficult to avoid a certain gloom
when the eye, sweeping over the vast expanse of Storm Bay
and D'Entrecasteaux Sound, discovers only three great ships in
a harbour fitted to contain the navies of the world.

The scene first of the horrible deeds of early convict days at
Macquarie Harbour and Port Arthur, and lately of the still
more frightful massacres of the aboriginal inhabitants of the
isle, Van Diemen's Land has never been a name of happy
omen, and now the island, in changing its title, seems not to
have escaped from the former blight. The poetry of the
English village names, met with throughout Tasmania, vanishes
before the recollection of the circumstances under which the
harsher native terms came to be supplanted. Fifty years ago,
our colonists found in Tasmania a powerful and numerous

CHAP, x.l TASMANIA. 349

though degraded native race. At this moment, three old
women and a lad who dwell on Gun-carriage Rock, in Bass's
Straits, are all who remain of the aboriginal population of the
island.

We live in an age of mild humanity, we are often told ; but,
whatever the polish of manner and of minds in the old country,
in outlying portions of the empire there is no lack of the old
savagery of our race. Battues of the natives were conducted
by the military in Tasmania not more than twenty years ago,
and are not unknown even now among the Queensland settlers.
Let it not be thought that Englishmen go out to murder natives
unprovoked ; they have that provocation for which even the
Spaniards in Mexico used to wait, and which the Brazilians
wait for now — the provocation of robberies committed in the
neighbourhood by natives unknown. It is not that there is no
offence to punish, it is that the punishment is indiscriminate,
that even when it falls upon the guilty it visits men who know
no better. Where one wretched untaught native pilfers from a
sheep-station, on the Queensland Downs, a dozen will be shot
by the settlers "as an example," and the remainder of the
tribe brought back to the district to be fed and kept, until
whisky, rum, and other devils' missionaries have done their
work.

Nothing will persuade the rougher class of Queensland
settlers that the "black-fellow" and his "jin" are human.
They tell you freely that they look upon the native Australian
as an ingenious kind of monkey, and that it is not for us to
talk too much of the treatment of the " jins," or native women,
while the " wrens " of the Curragh exist among ourselves. No
great distance appears to separate us from the days when the
Spaniards in the West Indies used to brand on the face and
arms all the natives they could catch, and gamble them away
for wine.

Though not more than three or four million acres out of
seventeen million acres of land in Tasmania have as yet been
alienated by the Crown, the population has increased only by
15,000 in the las' ten years. Such is the indolence of the
settlers, that vast iracts of land in the central plain, once fertile
under irrigation, have been allowed to fall back into a desert

350 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. x.

state from sheer neglect of the dams and conduits. Though
iron and coal are abundant, they are seldom if ever worked,
and one house in every thirty-two in the whole island is licensed
for the sale of spirits, of which the annual consumption exceeds
five gallons a head for every man, woman, and child in the
population. Tasmania reached her maximum of revenue in
1858, and her maximum of trade in 1853.

The curse of the country is the indolence of its lotus-eating
population, who, like all dwellers in climates cool but winter-
leas, are content to dream away their lives in drowsiness to
which the habits of a hotter but less equable clime — Queens-
land, for example — are energy itself. In addition, however, to
this natural cause of decline, Van Diemen's Land is not yet
free from all traces of the convict blood, nor from the evil
effects of reliance on forced labour. It is, indeed, but a few
years since the island was one great gaol, and in 1853 there
were still 20,000 actual convicts in the country. The old free
settlers will tell you that the deadly shade of slave labour has
not blighted Jamaica more thoroughly than that of convict
labour has Van Diemen's Land.

Seventy miles north-west of Hobarton is a sheet of water
called Macquarie Harbour, the deeds wrought upon the shores
of which are not to be forgotten in a decade. In 1823, there
were 228 prisoners at Macquarie Harbour, to whom, in the
year, 229 floggings and 9925 lashes were ordered, 9100 lashes
being actually inflicted. The cat was, by order of the autho-
rities, soaked in salt water and dried in the sun before being
used. There was at Macquarie Harbour one convict overseer
who took a delight in seeing his companions punished. A day
seldom passed without five or six being flogged on his reports
The convicts were at his mercy. In a space of five years,
during which the prisoners at Macquarie Harbour averaged
250 in number, there were 835 floggings and 32,723 lashes
administered. In the same five years, 112 convicts absconded
from this settlement, of whom ten were killed and eaten by
their companions, seventy-five perished in the bush with or
without cannibalism, two were captured with portions of human
flesh in their possession, and died in hospital, two were shot,
sixteen were hanged for murder and cannibalism, and seven are

CHAP, x.] TASMANIA. 351

icported to have made good their escape, though this is by no
means certain.

It has been stated by a Catholic missionary bishop in his
evidence before a Royal Commission, that when, after a mutiny
at one of the stations, he read out to his men the names of
thirty-one condemned to death, they with one accord fell upon
their knees, and solemnly thanked God that they were to be
delivered from that horrible place. Men were known to com-
mit murder that they might be sent away for trial, preferring
death to Macquarie Harbour.

The escapes were often made with the deliberate expectation
of death, the men perfectly knowing that they would have to
draw lots for which should be killed and eaten. Nothing has
ever been sworn to in the history of the world which, for re-
volting atrocity, can compare with the conduct of the Pierce-
Greenhill party during their attempted escape. The testimony
of Pierce is a revelation of the depths of degradation to which
man can descend. The most fearful thought, when we hear
of these Tasmanian horrors, is that probably many of those
subjected to them were originally guiltless. If only one in a
thousand was an innocent man, four human beings were con-
signed each year to hell on earth. We think, too, that the
age of transportation for mere political offences has long gone
by, yet it is but eleven or twelve years since Mr. Frost received
his pardon, after serving for sixteen years amid the horrors of
Port Arthur.

Tasmania has never been able to rid herself of the convict
population in any great degree, for the free colonies have
always kept a jealous watch upon her emigrants. Even at
the time of the great gold-rush to Victoria, almost every " Tas-
manian bolter " and many a suspected but innocent man was
seized upon his landing, and thrown into Pentridge Gaol, to
toil within its twenty-foot walls till death should come to his
relief. Even now, men of wealth and station in Victoria are
sometimes discovered to have been " bolters " in the digging
times, and are at the mercy of their neighbours and the police,
unless the Governor can be wheedled into granting pardons
for their former deeds. A wealthy Victorian was arrested as a
" Tasmanian bolter " while I was in the colony.

352 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. t.

The passport system is still in force in the free colonies with
regard to passengers arriving from penal settlements, and there
is a fine of p£ioo inflicted upon captains of ships bringing
convicts into Melbourne. The conditional pardons granted to
prisoners in West Australia and in Tasmania generally contain
words permitting the convict to visit any portion of the world
except the British isles, but the clause is a mere dead letter,
for none of our free colonies will receive even our pardoned
convicts.

It is hard to quarrel with the course the colonies have taken
in this matter, for to them the transportation system appears
in the light of moral vitriol-throwing ; still, there is a wide dis-
tinction to be drawn between the action of the New South
Welsh and that of the New Yorkers, when they declared to a
British Government of the last century, that nothing should
induce them to accept the labour of " white English slaves :"
the Sydney people have enjoyed the advantages of the system
they now blame. Even the Victorians and South Australians,
who have never had convicts in their land, can be met by
argument. The Australian colonies, it might be urged, were
planted for the sole purpose of affording a suitable soil for the
reception of British criminals ; in face of this fact, the remon-
strances of the free colonists read somewhat oddly, for it would
seem as though men who quitted, with open eyes, Great Britain
to make their home in the spots which their Government had
chosen as its giant prisons have little right to pretend to rouse
themselves on a sudden, and cry out that England is pouring
the scum of her soil on to a free land, and that they must rise
and defend themselves against the grievous wrong. Weighing,
however, calmly, the good and evil, we cannot avoid the con-
clusion that the Victorians have much reason to object to a
system which sends to another country a man who is too bad
for his own, just as Jersey rogues are transported to South-
ampton. The Victorian proposition of. selecting the most ruf-
fianly of the colonial expirees, and shipping them to England
in exchange for the convicts that we might send to Australia,
was but a plagiarism on the conduct of the Virginians in a
similar case, who quietly began to freight a ship with snakes.

The only cure for Tasmania, unless one is to be found ip

CHAP, x.] TASMANIA. 353

the mere lapse of years, lies in annexation to Victoria; a
measure strongly wished for by a' considerable party in each of
the colonies concerned. No two countries in the world are
rnore manifestly destined by nature to be complementary to
each other.

Owing to the small size of the country, and the great moral
influence of the landed gentry, Tasmanian politics are singu-
larly peaceful. For the Lower House elections, the suffrage
rests upon a household, not a manhood basis, as in Victoria
and New South Wales ; and for the Upper House it is placed
at £S°° m an7 property, or ,£50 a year in freehold land.
Tasmanian society is cast in a more aristocratic shape than is
that of Queensland, with this exception the most oligarchical
of all our colonies ; but even here, as in the other colonies and
the United States, the ballot is supported by the Conservatives.

Escaping from the capital and its Lilliputian politics, I sailed
up the Derwent to New Norfolk. The river reminds the
traveller sometimes of the Meuse, but oftener of the Dart, and
unites the beauties of both streams. The scenery is exquisitely
set in a framework of hops ; for not only are all the flats covered
with luxuriant bines, but the hills between which you survey
the views have also each its "garden," the bines being trained
upon a wire trellis.

A lovely ride was that from New Norfolk to the Panshanger
salmon-ponds, where the acclimatization of the English fish has
lately been attempted. The track, now cut along the river cliff,
now lost in the mimosa scrub, offers a succession of prospects,
each more charming than the one before it ; and that from the
ponds themselves is a repetition of the view along the vale of
the Towy, from Steel e's house near Caermarthen. Trout of a
foot long, and salmon of an inch, rewarded us (in the spirit)
for our ride, but we were called on to express our belief in the
statement, that salmon "returned from the sea" have lately.

been seen in the river. Father , the Catholic parish

priest, " that saw 'em," is the hero of the day, and his past ex-
periences upon the Shannon are quoted as testimonies to his
infallibility in fish questions. My hosts of New Norfolk had
their fears lest the reverend gentleman should be lynched, if it
•were finally proved that he had been mistaken,

2 A

354 GliEATZU tililTAllt. (Yiur. X.

The salmon madness will at least have two results : the
catalogue of indigenous birds will be reduced to a blank sheet,
for every wretched Tasmanian bird that never saw a salmon
egg in all its life is shot down and nailed to a post for fear it
should eat the ova ; and the British wasp will be acclimatized
in the southern hemisphere. One is known to have arrived in
the last box of ova, and to have survived with apparent cheer-
fulness his 100 days in ice. Happy fellow, to cross the line in
so cool a fashion !

The chief drawbacks to Tasmanian picnics and excursions
are the snakes, which are as numerous throughout the island as
they are round Sydney. One of the convicts in a letter home
once wrote : " Parrots is as thick as crows, and snakes is very
bad, fourteen to sixteen feet long ; " but in sober truth the
snakes are chiefly small.

The wonderful " snake stories " that in the colonial papers
take the place of the English "triple birth" and "gigantic
gooseberry " are all written in vacation time by the students at
Melbourne University ; but a true one that I heard in Hobarton
is too good to be lost. The Chief Justice of the island, who
in his leisure time is an amateur naturalist, and collects speci-
mens for European collections in his walks, told me that it was
his practice after killing a snake, to carry it into Hobarton tied
to a stick by a double lashing. A few days before my visit, on
entering his hall, where an hour before he had hung his stick
with a rare snake in readiness for the Government naturalist, he
found to his horror that the viper had been only scotched, and
that he had made use of his regained life to free himself from
the string which confined his head and neck. He was still
tied by the tail, so he was swinging to and fro, or " squirming
around," as some Americans would say, with open mouth and
protruded tongue. When lassoing with a piece of twine had
been tried in vain, my friend fetched a gun, and succeeded in
killing the snake and much damaging the stone-work of his
vestibule.

After a week's sojourn in the neighbourhood of Hobarton, I
again crossed the island, but this time by a night of piercing
moonlight such as can be witnessed only in the dry air of the
far south. High in the heavens, and opposite the moon, was
the solemn constellation of the Southern Cross, sharply re-

CHAP JL| TASMANIA. j55

lieved upon the pitchy background of the Magellanic clouds,
while the weird-tinted stars which vary the night-sky of the
southern hemisphere stood out from the blue firmament else
The next day I was again in Melbourne.

2 A 2

CHAPTER XI.
CONFEDERATION.

MELBOURNE is unusually gay ; for at a shapely palace in the
centre of the city the second great Intercolonial Exhibition is
being held, and, as its last days are drawing to their close, fifty
thousand people — a great number for the colonies — visit the
building every week. There are exhibitors from each of our
seven southern colonies, and from French New Caledonia.
Netherlandish India, and the Mauritius. It is strange to re-
member now that in the colonization both of New Zealand and
of Australia, we were the successful rivals of the French only
after having been behind them in awakening to the advisability
of an occupation of those countries. In the case of New Zealand,
the French fleet was anticipated three several times by the fore-
thought and decision of our naval officers on the station ; and
in the case of Australia, the whole south coast was actually
named " La Terre Napole'on," and surveyed for colonization by
Captain Baudin in 1800. New Caledonia, on the other hand,
was named and occupied by ourselves, and afterwards abandoned
to the French.

The present remarkable exhibition of the products of the
Australias, coming just at the time when the border customs
between Victoria and New South Wales have been abolished
by agreement, and when all seems to point to the formation of
a customs union between the colonies, leads men to look still
further forward, and to expect confederation. It is worthy of
notice at this conjuncture that the Australian Protectionists,
as a rule, refuse to be protected against their immediate
neighbours, just as those of America protect the manufactures
of the Union rather than of single States. They tell us that

CHAP, xi.] CONFEDERATION. 357

they can point, with regard to Europe, to pauper labour, but
that they have no case as against the sister colonies ; they wish,
they say, to obtain a wide market for the sale of the produce
of each colony : the nationality they would create is to be
Australian, not provincial.

Already there is postal union, and a partial customs union,
and confederation itself, however distant in fact, has been very
lately brought about in the spirit by the efforts of the London
press, one well-known paper having three times in a single article
called the Governor of 'New South Wales by the sounding title
of " Governor-General of the Australasian Colonies," to which
he has, of course, not the faintest claim.

There are many difficulties in the way of confederation. The
leading merchants and squatters of Victoria are in favour of it ;
but not so those of the poorer or less populous colonies, where
there is much fear of being swamped. The costliness of the
federal government of New Zealand is a warning against over
hasty confederation. Victoria, too, would probably insist upon
the exclusion of West Australia, on account of her convict popu-
lation. The continental theory is undreamt of by Australians,
owing to their having always been inhabitants of comparatively
small States, and not, like dwellers in the organized territories of
America, potentially citizens of a vast and homogeneous empire.

The choice of capital will, here as in Canada, be a matter of
peculiar difficulty. It is to be hoped by all lovers of freedom
that some hitherto unknown village will be selected. There is
in all great cities a strong tendency to Imperialism. Bad pave-
ment, much noise, narrow lanes, blockaded streets, all these
things are ill dealt with by free government, we are told. English-
men who have been in Paris, Americans who know St. Peters-
burg, forgetting that without the Emperor the PreTet is impossible,
cry out that London, that New York, in their turn need a Hauss-
mann. In this tendency lies a terrible danger to free States — a
danger avoided, however, or greatly lessened, by the seat of
the Legislature being placed, as in Canada and the United States,
far away from the great cities. Were Melbourne to become the
seat of government, nothing could prevent the distant colonies
from increasing the already gigantic power of that city by
choosing her merchants as their representatives,

J58 QSEATEK BETTAI3. [CHAP. ri.

The bearing of confederation upon Imperial interests is a
more simple matter. Although union will tend to the earlier
independence of the colonies, yet, if federated, they are more
likely to be a valuable ally than they could be if remaining so
many separate countries. They would also be a stronger enemy ;
but distance will make all their wars naval, and a strong fleet
would be more valuable to us as a friend tl'an dangerous as an
enemy, unless in the case of a coalition against us, in which it
would probably not be the interest of Australia to join.

From the colonial point of view, federation would tend to
secure to the Australians better general and local government
than they possess at present. It is absurd to expect that colonial
governors should be upon good terms with their charges when
we shift men every four years — say from Demerara to New
South Wales, or from Jamaica to Victoria. The unhappy
governor loses half a year in moving to his post, and a couple
of years in coming to understand the circumstances of his new
province, and then settles down to be successful in the ruling of
educated whites under democratic institutions only k" he can
entirely throw aside the whole of his experience, derived as it
will probably have been from the despotic sway over blacks.
We never can have a set of colonial governors fit for Australia
until the Australian governments are made a distinct service,
and entirely separated from those of the West Indies, of Africa,
and Hong Kong.

Besides improving the government, confederation would
lend to every colonist the dignity derived from citizenship of a
great country — a point the importance of which will not be
contested by any one who has been in America since the war.

It is not easy to resist the conclusion that confederation is in
every way desirable. If it leads to independence, we must say
to the Australians what Houmai ta Whiti said in his great
speech to the progenitors of the Maori race when they were
quitting Hawaiki : " Depart, and dwell in peace ; let there be
£0 quarrelling amongst you, but build up a great people."

359

CHAPTER XII.
ADELAIDE.

THE capital of South Australia is reputed the hottest of all the
cities that are chiefly inhabited by the English race, and as I
neared it through the Backstairs Passage into the Gulf of St.
Vincent, past Kangaroo Island, and still more when I landed
at Glenelg, I came to the conclusion that its reputation is
deserved. The extreme heat which characterizes South Australia
is to some extent a consequence of its lying as far north as
New South Wales and Queensland, and so far inland as to
escape the breeze by which their coasts are visited ; for although
by " South Australia " we should, in the southern hemisphere,
naturally understand that portion of Australia which was farthest
from the tropics, yet it is a curious fact that the whole colony
of Victoria is to the south of Adelaide, and that nearly all the
northernmost points of the continent now lie within the country
misnamed " South Australia."

The immense northern territory, being supposed to be value-
less, has generously been handed over to South Australia, which
thus becomes the widest of all British colonies, and nearly as
large as English Hindostan. If the present great expenditure
succeeds in causing the discovery of any good land at the
north, it will of course at once be made a separate colony. The
only important result that seems likely to follow from this annex-
ation of the northern territory to South Australia is that school-
boys' geography will suffer ; one would expect, indeed, that a
total destruction of all principle in the next generation will be
the inevitable result of so rude a blow to confidence in books
and masters as the assurance from a teacher's lips that the two
juost remote countries of \ustralia are united qnder one colonial

36o GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. XH.

government, and that the northernmost points of the whole
continent are situated in South Australia. Boys will probably
conclude that, across the line, south becomes north and north
south, and that in Australia the sun rises in the west.

Instead of gold, wheat, sheep, as in Victoria, the staples
here are wheat, sheep, copper ; and my introduction to South
Australia was characteristic of the colony, for I found in Port
Adelaide, where I first set foot, not only every store filled to
overflowing, but piles of wheat-sacks in the roadways, and lines
of wheat-cars on the sidings of railways, without even a tarpaulin
to cover the grain.

Of all the mysteries of commerce, those that concern the
wheat and flour trade are, perhaps, the strangest to the un-
initiated. Breadstuffs are still sent from California and Chili
to Victoria, yet from Adelaide, close at hand, wheat is being
sent to England and flour to New York !

There can be no doubt but that ultimately Victoria and
Tasmania will at least succeed in feeding themselves. It is
probable that neither New Zealand nor Queensland will find it
to their interest to do the like. Wool-growing in the former,
and cotton and wool in the latter, will continue to pay better
than wheat in the greater portion of their lands. Their granary,
and that possibly of the city of Sydney itself, will be found in
South Australia, especially if land capable of carrying wheat be
discovered to the westward of the settlements about Adelaide.
That the Australias, Chili, California, Oregon, and other Pacific
States can ever export largely of wheat to Europe is more than
doubtful. If manufactures spring up on this side the world,
these countries, whatever their fertility, will have at least enough
to do to feed themselves.

As I entered the streets of the "farinaceous village," as
Adelaide is called by conceited Victorians, I was struck with
the amount of character they exhibit both in the way of buildings,
of faces, and of dress. The South Australians have far more
idea of adapting their houses and clothes to their climate than
have the people of the other colonies, and their faces adapt
themselves. The verandahs to the shops are sufficiently close
to form a perfect piazza ; the people rise early, and water the
side-walk in front of their houses; and you never meet a man

CHAP, in.] ADELAIDE. 361

who does not make some sacrifice to the heat, in the shape of
puggree, silk coat, or sun-helmet ; but the women are nearly as
unwise here as in the other colonies, and persist in going about
3n shawls and coloured dresses. Might they but see a few of
the Richmond or Baltimore ladies in their pure white muslin
frocks, and die of envy, for the dress most suited to a hot dry
climate is also the most beautiful under its bright sun.

The German element is strong in Scath Australia, and there
are whole villages in the wheat-country where English is never
spoken; but here, as in America, there has been no mingling
of the races, and the whole divergence from the British types is
traceable to climatic influences, and especially dry heat. The
men born here are thin, and fine-featured, somewhat like the
Pitcairn Islanders, while the women are all alike — small, pretty,
and bright, but with a burnt-up look. The haggard eye might,
perhaps, be ascribed to the dreaded presence of my old friend
of the Rocky Mountains, the brulot sand-fly. The inhabitants
of all hot dry countries speak from the head, and not the chest,
and the English in Australia are acquiring this habit ; you
seldom find a " corn-stalk " who speaks well from the chest

The air is crisp and hot — crisper and hotter even than that of
Melbourne. The shaded thermometer upon the Victorian coast
seldom reaches 1 10°, but in the town of Adelaide, 117° has been
recorded by the Government astronomer. Such is the figure of
the Australian continent, that Adelaide, although a seaport
town, lies, as it were, inland. Catching the heated gales from
three of the cardinal points, Adelaide has a summer six months
long, and is exposed to a fearful continuance of hot winds ;
nevertheless, 105° at Adelaide is easier borne than 95° in the
shade at Sydney.

Nothing can be prettier than the outskirts of the capital. In
laying out Adelaide, its founders have reserved a park about a
quarter of a mile in width all round the city. This gives a
charming drive nine miles long, outside which again are the
olive-yards and villas of the citizens. Hedges of the yellow
cactus, or of the graceful Kangaroo Island acacia, bound the
gardens, and the pomegranate, magnolia, fig, and aloe grow
upon every lawn. Five miles to the eastward are the cool
wooded hills of the Mount Lofty Range, on the tops of which

362 GEEATER BRITAIN. [CHAP, xtt

are grown the English fruits for which the plains afford no shade
or moisture.

Crossing the Adelaide plains, for fifty miles by railway, to
Kapunda, I beheld one great wheat-field without a break. The
country was finer than any stretch of equal extent in California
or Victoria, and looked as though the crops were " standing " —
which in one sense they were, though the grain was long since
" in." The fact is that the farmers use the Ridley machines,
by which the ears are thrashed out without any cutting of the
straw, which continues to stand, and is finally ploughed in at
leisure, except in the neighbourhood of Adelaide. There would
be a golden age of partridge-shooting in Old England did the
climate and the price of straw allow of the adoption of the
Ridley reaper. Under this system, South Australia grows on
the average six times as much wheat as she can use, whereas, if
reaping had to be paid for, she could only grow from one and a
half times to twice as much as would meet the home demand.

In this country, as in America, " bad farming " is found to
pay, for with cheap land, the Ridley reaper, and good markets,
light crops without labour, except the peasant-proprietor's own
toil, pay well when heavy crops obtained by the use of hired
labour would not reimburse the capitalist. The amount of land
under cultivation has been trebled in the last seven years, and
half a million acres are now under wheat. South Australia has
this year produced seven times as much grain as she can
consume, and twelve acres are under wheat for every adult male
of the population of the colony.

A committee has been lately sitting in New South Wales " to
consider the state of the colony." To judge from the evidence
taken before it, the members seemed to have conceived that
their task was to inquire why South Australia prospered above
New South Wales. Frugality of the people, especially of the
Germans, and fertility of the soil were the reasons which they
gave for the result, but it is impossible not to see that the success
of South Australia is but another instance of the triumph of
small proprietors, of whom there are now some seven or eight
thousand in the colony, and who were brought here by the
adoption of the Wakefield land system.

In the early days of the colony, land was sold at a good price

CHAI. XH.J ADELAIDE. 3bj

in ijo-acre sections, with one acre of town-land to each agri-
cultural section. Now, under rules made at home, but confirmed
after the introduction of self-government, land is sold by auction,
with a reserved price of £i an acre, but when once a block
has passed the hammer, it can for ever be taken up at £\ the
acre without further competition. The Land Fund is kept
separate from the other revenue, and a few permanent charges,
such as that for the aborigines, being paid out of it, the remainder
is divided into three portions, of which two are destined for
public works, and one for immigration.

There is a marvellous contrast to be drawn between the
success which has attended the Wakefield system in South
Australia and the total failure, in the neighbouring colony of
West Australia, of the old system, under which, vast tracts of
land being alienated for small prices by the Crown, there re-
mains no fund for introducing that abundant supply of labour
without which the land is useless.

Adelaide is so distant from Europe that no immigrants come
of themselves, and, in the assisted importation of both men and
women, the relative proportions of English, Scotch, and Irish
that exist at home are carefully preserved ; by which simple
precaution the colony is saved from an organic change of type
such as that which threatens all America, although it would, of
course, be idle to deny that the restriction is aimed against the
Irish.

The greatest difficulty of young countries lies in the want of
women : not only is this a bar to the natural increase of popu-
lation ; it is a deficiency preventive of permanency, destructive
of religion : where woman is not, there can be no home, no
country.

How to obtain a supply of marriageable girls is a question
which Canada, Tasmania, South Australia, and New South
Wales, have each in their turn attempted to solve by the arti-
ficial introduction of Irish workhouse girls. The difficulty
apparently got rid of, we begin to find that it is not so much as
fairly seen; we have yet to look it "squarely" in the face.
The point of the matter is that we should find not girls, but
honest girls — not women merely, but women ht to bear families^
In » free State,

364 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xn.

One of the colonial superintendents, writing of a lately-
received batch of Irish workhouse girls, has said that, if these
are the " well-conducted girls, he should be curious to see a few
of the evil-disposed." While in South Australia, I read the
details of the landing of a similar party of women, from
Limerick workhouse, one Sunday afternoon at Point Levi, the
Lambeth of Quebec. Although supplied by the city authorities
with meat and drink, and ordered to leave for Montreal at early
morning, nothing could be more abominable than their conduct
in the meanwhile. They sold baggage, bonnets, combs, cloaks,
and scarves, keeping on nothing but their crinolines and sense-
less finery. With the pence they thus collected they bought
corn-whisky, and in a few hours were yelling, fighting, swearing,
wallowing in beastly drunkenness ; and by the time the autho-
rities came down to pack them off by train, they were as fiends,
mad with rum and whisky. At five in the morning, they reached
the Catholic Home at Montreal, where the pious nuns were
shocked and horrified at their grossness of conduct and lewd
speech ; nothing should force them, they declared, ever again to
take into their peaceable asylum the Irish workhouse girls. This
was no exceptional case : the reports from South Australia,
from Tasmania, can show as bad ; and in Canada such conduct
on the part of the freshly-landed girls is common. A Tas-
manian magistrate has stated in Evidence before a Parlia-
mentary Committee that once when his wife was in ill health he
went to one of the immigration offices, and applied for a decent
woman to attend on a sick lady. The woman was sent down,
and found next day in her room lying on the bed in a state best
pictured in her own words : " Here I am with my yard of clay,
Mowing a cloud, you say"

It is evident that a batch of thoroughly bad girls costs a
colony from first to last, in the way of prisons, hospitals, and
public morals, ten times as much as would the free passages
across the seas of an equal number of worthy Irish women,
free from the workhouse taint. Of one of these gangs which
landed in Quebec not many years ago, it has been asserted by
the immigration superintendents that the traces are visible to
this day, for wherever the women went, " sin, and shame, and
death were in their track." The Irish unions have no desire in

. xti/j ADELAIDE. $65

the matter beyond that of getting rid of their most abandoned
girls ; their interests and those of the colonies they supply are
diametrically opposed. No inspection, no agreements, no
supervision can be effective in the face of facts like these. The
class that the unions can afford to send, Canada and Tasmania
cannot afford to keep. Women are sent out with babies in
their arms ; no dne will take them into service because the
children are in the way, and in a few weeks they fall chargeable
on one of the colonial benevolent societies, to be kept till the
children grow up or the mothers die. Even when the girls are
not so wholly vicious as to be useless in service, they are utterly
ignorant of everything they ought to know. Of neither domestic
nor farm-work have they a. grain of knowledge. Of thirteen
who were lately sent to an up-country town, but one knew how
to cook, or wash, or milk, or iron, while three of them had
agreed to refuse employment unless they were engaged to serve
together. The agents are at their wits' ends ; either the girls
are so notoriously infamous in their ways of life that no one
will hire them, or else they are so extravagant in their new-
found " independence " that they on their side will not be hired.
Meanwhile the Irish authorities lay every evil upon the long
sea voyage. They say that they select the best of girls, but
that a few days at sea suffice to demoralize them.

The colonies could not do better than combine for the
establishment of a new and more efficient emigration agency in
Ireland. To avoid the evil, by as far as possible refusing to
meet it face to face, South Australia has put restrictions on her
Irish immigration ; for there, as in America, it is found that the
Scotch and Germans are the best of immigrants. The Scotch
are not more successful in Adelaide than everywhere in the
known world. Half the most prominent among the statesmen
of the Canadian Confederation, of Victoria, and of Queensland,
are born Scots, and all the great merchants of India are of the
same nation. Whether it be that the Scotch emigrants are for
the most part men of better education than those of other
nations, of whose citizens only the poorest and most ignorant
are known to emigrate, or whether the Scotchman owes his
uniform success in every climate to his perseverance or his
shrewdness, the fact remains, that wherever abroad you eonae

366 GkBAfER fiJttfAM. [CHAP, lit.

across a Scotchman, you invariably find him prosperous and
respected.

The Scotch emigrant is a man who leaves Scotland because
he wishes to rise faster and higher than he can at home, whereas
the emigrant Irishman quits Galway or County Cork only
because there is no longer food or shelter for him there. The
Scotchman crosses the seas in calculating contentment; the
Irishman in sorrow and despair.

At the Burra Burra and Kapunda copper-mines there is not
much to see, so my last days in South Australia were given to
the political life of the colony, which presents one singular
feature. For the elections to the Council or Upper House, for
which the franchise is a freehold worth ^50, or a leasehold of
^20 a year, the whole country forms but a single district, and
the majority elect their men. In a country where party feeling
runs high, such a system would evidently unite almost all the
evils conceivable in a plan of representation, but in a peaceful
colony it undoubtedly works well. Having absolute power in
their hands, the majority here, as in the selection of a governor
for an American State, use their position with great prudence,
and make choice of the best men that the country can produce.
The franchise for the Lower House, for the elections to which
the country is "districted," is the simple one of six months'
residence, which with the ballot gives excellent results.

The day that I left Adelaide was also that upon which
Captain Cadell, the opener of the Murray to trade, sailed with
his naval expedition to fix upon a capital for the Northern
territory; that coast of tropical Australia which faces the
Moluccas. As Governor Gilpin had pressed me to stay, he
pressed me to go with him, making as an inducement a promise
to name after me either " a city " or a headland. He said he
should advise me to select the headland, because that would
remain, whereas the city probably would not. When I pleaded
that he had no authority to carry passengers, he offered to take
me as his surgeon. Hitherto the expeditions have discovered
nothing but natives, mangroves, alligators, and sea-slugs; and
the whole of the money received from capitalists at home, for
300,000 acres of land to be surveyed and handed over to them
in North Australia, being now exhausted, the Government are

CHif. XJt] AbLLAtbE. 467

seriously thinking of reimbursing the investors and giving up
the search for land. It would be as cheap to colonize
equatorial Africa from Adelaide, as tropical Australia. If the
Northern territory is ever to be rendered habitable, it must be
by Queensland that the work is done.

It is not certain that North Australia may not be found to
yield gold in plenty. In a little-known manuscript of the
seventeenth century, the north-west of Australia is called " The
land of gold ;" and we are told that the fishermen of Solor,
driven on to this land of gold by stress of weather, picked up
in a few hours their boat full of gold nuggets, and returned in
safety. They never dared repeat their voyage, on account of
their dread of the unknown seas ; but Manoel Godinho de Eredia
was commissioned by the Portuguese Lord Admiral of India to
explore this gold land, and enrich the Crown of Portugal by
the capture of the treasures it contained. It would be strange
enough if gold came to be discovered on the north-west coast,
in the spot from which the Portuguese icported their discovery.

By dawn, after one of the most stifling of Australian nights,
I left Port Adelaide for King George's Sound. A long narrow
belt of a clear red-yellow light lay glowing along the horizon to
the east, portending heat and drought ; elsewhere the skies were
of a deep blue-black. As we steamed past Kangaroo Island,
and through Investigator Straits, the sun shot up from the tawny
plains, and the hot wind from the northern desert, rising on a
sudden after the stillness of the night, whirled clouds of sand
over the surface of the bay.

368 GREATER

CHAPTER XIIL
TRANSPORTATION.

AFTER five days' steady steaming across the great Australian
bight, north of W'.iich lies the true " Terra Australis incognita,"
I reached King George's Sound — " Le Port du Roi Georges en
Australie," as I saw it written on a letter in the gaol. At the
shore end of a land-locked harbour, the little houses of bright
white stone that make up the town of Albany peep out from
among geranium-covered rocks. The climate, unlike that of
the greater portion of Australia, is damp and tropical, and the
dense scrub is a mass of flowering bushes, with bright blue and
scarlet blooms and curiously-cut leaves.

The contrast between the scenery and the people of West
Australia is great indeed. The aboriginal inhabitants of Albany
were represented by a tribe of filthy natives — tall, half-starved,
their heads bedaubed with red ochre, and their faces smeared
with yellow clay ; the " colonists " by a gang of fiend-faced
convicts working in chains upon the esplanade, and a group of
scowling expirees hunting a monkey with bull-dogs on the pier ;
while the native women, half clothed in tattered kangaroo-skins,
came slouching past with an aspect of defiant wretchedness.
Work is never done in West Australia unless under the compul-
sion of the lash, for a similar degradation of labour is produced
by the use of convicts as by that of slaves.

Settled at an earlier date than was South Australia, West
Australia, then called Swan River, although one of the oldest oi
the colonies, was so soon ruined by the free gift to the first
settlers of vast territories useless without labour, that in 1849
she petitioned to be made a penal settlement, and though at
the instance of Victoria transportation to the Australias has

xiil.] TllAXSPOjtTA.TroN 369

now reased, Fretmantle prison is still the rr.6s"t Considerable
convict establishment we possess across the seas.

At the time of my visit, there were 10,000 convicts or eman-
cipists within the " colony," of whom 1500 were in prison, 1500
in private service on tickets-of-leave, while 1500 had served out
their time, and over 5000 had been released upon conditional
pardons. Six hundred of the convicts had arrived from England
in 1865. Out of a total population, free and convict, of 20,000,
the offenders in the year had numbered nearly 3500, or moie
than one-sixth of the people, counting women and children.

If twenty years of convict labour seem to have done but little
for the settlement, they have at least enabled us to draw the
moral, that transportation and free immigration cannot exist
side by side : the one element must overbear and destroy the
other. In Western Australia, the convicts and their keepers
form two-thirds of the whole population, and the district is a
great English prison, not a colony, and exports but a little wool,
a little sandal-wood, and a little cotton.

Western Australia is as unpopular with the convicts as with
free settlers : fifty or sixty convicts have successfully escaped
from the settlement within the last few years. From twenty to
thirty escapes take place annually, but the men are usually re-
captured within a month or two, although sheltered by the
people, the vast majority of whom are ticket-of-leave men or ex-
convicts. Absconders receive a hundred lashes and one year in
the chain-gang, yet from sixty to seventy unsuccessful attempts
are reported every year.

On the road between Albany and Hamilton I saw a man at
work in ponderous irons. The sun was striking down on him
in a way that none can fancj who have no experience of Western
Australia or Bengal, and his labour was of the heaviest ; now he
had to prise up huge rocks with a crowbar, now to handle pick
and shovel, now to use the rammer, under the eye of an armed
warder, who idled in the shade by the road-side. This was an
" escape-man," thus treated with a view to cause him to cease
his continual endeavours to get away from Albany. No wonder
that the "chain-gang" system is a failure, and the number both
of attempts and actual escapes larger under it than before the
iutroduction of this tremendous punishment.

2 B

37° GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xm.

Many of the " escapes " are made with no other view than to
obtain a momentary change of scene. Two convicts once put
lo sea from Port Arthur in an empty oil-cask. On the last
return trip of the ship in which I sailed from Adelaide to King
George's Sound, a convict coal-man was found built up in the
coal-heap on deck ; he and his mates at Albany had drawn lots
to settle which of them should be thus packed off by the help of
the others " for a change." Of ultimate escape there could be
no chance; the coal on deck could not fail to be exhausted
within a day or two after leaving port, and this they knew.
When he emerged, black, half-smothered, and nearly starved,
from his hiding-place, he allowed himself to be quietly ironed,
and so kept till the ship reached Adelaide, when he was given
up to the authorities, and sent back to Albany for punishment.
Acts of this class are common enough to have received a name
The offenders are called " bolters for a change."

A convict has been known, wtien marching in his gang, sud-
denly to lift up his spade, and split the skull of the man who
walked in front of him, thus courting a certain death for no
reason but to escape from the monotony of toil. Another has
doubled his punishment for fun by calling out to the magis-
trates : " Gentlemen, pray remember that I am entitled to an
iron-gang, because this is the second time of my absconding."

One of the strangest things about the advance of England is
the many-sided character of the form of early settlement : Central
North America we plant with Mormons, New Zealand with the
runaways of our whaling ships, Tasmania and portions of Aus-
tralia with our transported felons. Transportation has gone
through many phases since the system took its rise in the exile
to the colonies, under Charles II., of the moss-troopers of North-
umberland. The plan of forcing the exiles to labour as slaves
on the plantations was introduced in the reign of George II.,
and by an Act then passed offenders were actually put up to
auction, and knocked down to men who undertook to transport
them, and make what they could of their labour. In 1786, an
Order in Council named the eastern coast of Australia and the
adjacent islands as the spot to which transportation beyond the
seas should be directed, and in 1787 the black bar was drawn
indelibly across the page of history which records the foundation

CHAP. xm.J TRANSPORTATION. 37*

of the colony of New South Wales. From that time to the
present day the world has witnessed the portentous sight of
great countries in which the major portion of the people, the
whole of the handicraftsmen, are convicted felons.

There being no free people whatever in the "colonies" when
first formed, the Governors had no choice but to appoint con-
victs to all the official situations. The consequence was robbery
and corruption. Recorded sentences were altered by the convict-
clerks, free pardons and grants of land were sold for money.
The convict overseers forced their gangmen to labour, not for
Government, but for themselves, securing secrecy by the un-
limited supply of rum to the men, who in turn bought native
women with all that they could spare. On the sheep-stations
whole herds were stolen, and those from neighbouring lands
driven in to show on muster-days. Enormous fortunes were
accumulated by some of the emancipists, by fraud and infamy
rather than by prudence, we are told ; and a vast number of
convicts were soon at large in Sydney town itself, without the
knowledge of the police. As the settlement waxed in years and
size, the sons of convict parents grew up in total ignorance,
while such few free settlers as arrived — " the ancients," as they
were styled, or " the ancient nobility of Botany Bay " — were
wholly dependent on convict tutors for the education of their
children — the "corn-stalks" and "currency girls;" and cock-
fighting was the chief amusement of both sexes. The news-
papers were without exception conducted by gentlemen convicts,
or "specials," as they were called, who were assigned to the
editors for that purpose, and the police force itself was composed
of ticket-of-leave men and " emancipists." Convicts were thus
the only schoolmasters, the only governesses, the only nurses,
the only journalists, and, as there were even convict clergymen
and convict university professors, the training of the youth
of the land was committed almost exclusively to the felon's
care.

A petition sent home from Tasmania in 1848 is simple and
pathetic ; it is from the parents and guardians resident in Van
Diemen's Land. They set forth that there are 13,000 children
growing up in the colony, that within six years alone 24,000
convicts have been turned into the. island, and of these but

2 B 2

372 GREATER BKlfAIX. (ctur. xm.

4000 women. The result is, that their children arc brought up
in the midst of profligacy and degradation.

The lowest depth of villany, if in such universal infamy
degrees can be conceived, was to be met with in the parties
working in the " chain-gangs " on the roads. " Assignees " too
bad even for the whip of the harshest, or the " beef and beer "
of the most lenient master, brutalised still further, if that were
possible, by association with those as vile as themselves, and
followed about the country by women too infamous even for
service in the houses of the up-country settlers, or in the gin-
palaces of the towns, worked in gangs upon the roads by day,
whenever promises of spirits or the hope of tobacco could
induce them to work at all, and found a compensation for such
unusual toil in nightly quitting their camp, and traversing the
country, robbing and murdering those they met, and sacking
every homestead that lay in their track.

The clerk in charge of one of the great convict barracks was
himself a convict, and had an understanding with the men under
his care that they might prowl about at night and rob, on con-
dition that they should share their gains with him, and that,
if they were found out, he should himself prosecute them for
being absent without leave. Juries were composed either of
convicts, or of publicans dependent on the convicts for their
livelihood, and convictions were of necessity extremely rare.
In a plain case of murder the judge was known to say, "If
I don't attend to the recommendation to mercy, these fellows
will never find a man guilty again;" and jurymen would fre-
quently hand down notes to the counsel for the defence, and
bid him give himself no trouble, as they intended to acquit
their friend.

The lawyers were mostly convicts, and perjury in the courts
was rife. It has been given in evidence before a Royal Com-
mission by a magistrate of New South Wales, that a Sydney
free immigrant once had a tailor's bill sent in which he did not
owe, he having been but a few weeks in the colony. He in-
structed a lawyer, and did not himself appear in court. He
afterwards heard that he had won his case, for the tailor had
sworn to the bill, but the immigrant's lawyer, " to save trouble,"
had called a witness who swore to having paid it, which settled

CHAP, xiii.] TRANSPORTATION. 375

the case. Sometimes there were not only convict witnesses and
convict jurors, but convict judges.

The assignment system was supposed to be a great improve-
ment upon the gaol, but its only certain result was that convict
master and convict man used to get drunk together, while a
night never passed without a burglary in Sydney. Many of the
convicts' mistresses went out from England as Government free
emigrants, taking with them funds subscribed by the thieves at
home and money obtained by the robberies for which their
" fancy men " had been convicted, and on their arrival at Sydney
succeeded in getting their paramours assigned to them as con-
vict servants. Such was the disparity of the sexes that the term
"wife" was a mockery, and the Female Emigration Society and
the Government vied with each other in sending out to Sydney
the worst women iry all London, to reinforce the ranks of the
convict girls of the Paramatta factory. Even among the free
settlers, marriage soon became extremely rare. Convicts were
at the head of the colleges and benevolent asylums ; the custom-
house officials were all convicts ; one of the occupants of the
office of Attorney-General took for his clerk a notorious convict,
who was actually re-committed to Bathurst after his appoint-
ment, and yet allowed to return to Sydney and resume his
duties.

The most remarkable peculiarity of the assignment system
was its gross uncertainty. Some assigned convicts spent their
time working for high wages, living and drinking with their
masters ; others were mere slaves. Whether, however, he be in
practice well or ill treated, in the assignment or apprenticeship
system the convict is, under whatever name, a slave, subject to
the caprice of a master who, though he cannot himself flog his
" servant," can have him flogged by writing a note or sending
his compliments to his neighbour the magistrate on the next run
or farm. The "whipping-houses" of Mississippi and Alabama
had their parallel in New South Wales ; a look or word would
cause the hurrying of the servant to the post or the forge AS a
preliminary to a month in the chain-gang " on the roads." On
the other hand, under the assignment system nothing can pre-
vent skilled convict workmen being paid and pampered by their
masters, whose interest it evidently becomes to get out of them

374

GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. MIL

all the work possible, by excessive indulgence, as intelligent
labour cannot be produced through the machinery of the whip-
ping-post, but may be through that of " beef and beer."

Whatever may have been the true interest of the free settlers,
cruelty was in practice commoner than indulgence. Fifty and
a hundred lashes, months of solitary confinement, years of
labour in chains on the roads, were laid upon convicts for such
petty offences as brawling, drunkenness and disobedience. In
1835, among the 28,000 convicts then in New South Wales,
there were 22,000 summary convictions for disorderly or dis-
honest conduct, and in a year the average was 3000 floggings,
and above 100,000 lashes. In" Tasmania, where the convicts
then numbered 15,000, the summary convictions were 15,000
and the lashes 50,000 a year.

The criminal returns of Tasmania and^ New South Wales
contain the condemnation of the transportation system. In the
single year of 1834, one-seventh of the free population of Van
Diemen's Land were summarily convicted of drunkenness. In
that year, in a population of 37,000, 15,000 were convicted
before the courts for various offences. Over a hundred persons
a year were at that time sentenced to death in New South
Wales alone. Less than a fourth of the convicts served their
time without incurring additional punishment from the police,
but those who thus escaped proved in after-life the worst of all,
and even Government officials were forced into admitting that
transportation demoralized far more persons than it reformed.
Hundreds of assigned convicts made their escape to the back
country, and became bushrangers ; many got down to the
coast, and crossed to the Pacific islands, whence they spread
the infamies of New South Wales throughout all Polynesia. A
Select Committee of the House of Commons reported, in words
characteristic of our race, that these convicts committed, in
New Zealand and the Pacific, " outrages at which humanity
shudders," and which were to be deplored as being " injurious
to our commercial interests in that quarter of the globe."

Transportation to New South Wales came to its end none
too soon : in fifty years 75,000 convicts had been transported
to that colony, and 30,000 to the little island of Tasmania in
twenty years.

CHAP, xiii.] TRANSPORTATION. 375

Were there no other argument for the discontinuance of
transportation, it would be almost enough to say that the life
in the convict-ship itself makes the reformation of transported
criminals impossible. Where many bad men are brought toge-
ther, the few not wholly corrupt who may be among them have
no opportunity for speech, and the grain of good that may
exist in every heart can have no chance for life ; if not inclina-
tion, pride at least leads the " old hand " to put down all acts
that are not vile, all words that are not obscene. Those who
have sailed in convict company say that there is something
terrible in the fiendish delight that the " old hands " take in
watching the steady degradation of the " new chums." The
hardened criminals invariably meet the less vile with outrage,
ridicule, and contempt, and the better men soon succumb to
ruffians who have crime for their profession, and for all their
relaxation vice.

To describe the horrors of the convict-ships, we are told,
would be impossible. The imagination will scarce suffice to
call up dreams so hideous. Four months of filthiness in a
floating hell sink even the least bad ,to the level of unteachable
brutality. Mutiny is unknown ; the convicts are their own
masters and the ship's, but the shrewd callousness of the old
gaol-bird teaches all that there is nothing to be gained even by
momentary success. Rage and violence are seldom seen, but
there is a humour that is worse than blows — conversation that
transcends all crime in infamy.

It will be long before the last traces of convict disease dis-
appear from Tasmania and New South Wales ; the gold-find
has done much to purify the air, free selection may lead to a
still more bright advance, manufacturing may lend its help;
but years must go by before Tasmania can be prosperous or
Sydney moral. Their history is not only valuable as a guide
to those who have to save West Australia, as General Bourke
and Mr. Wentworth saved New South Wales, but as an example,
not picked from ancient rolls, but from the records of a system
founded within the memory of living man, and still existent,
of what transportation must necessarily be, and what it may
easily become.

The results of a dispassionate survey of the transportation

376 GREATER BRITAIN. [CLAP, xm,

system in the abstract are far from satisfactory. If deporta-
tion be considered as a punishment, it would be hard to find
a worse. Punishment should be equable, reformatory, deter-
rent, cheap. Transportation is the most costly of all the
punishments that are known to us ; it is subject to variations
that cannot be guarded against; it is severest to the least
guilty and slightest to the most hardened ; it morally destroys
those who have some good remaining in them ; it leaves the
ruffianly malefactor worse if possible than it finds him ; and,
while it is frightfully cruel and vindictive in its character, it
is useless as a deterrent because its nature is unknown at
home. Transportation to the English thief means exile, and
nothing more ; it is only after conviction, when far away from
his uncaught associates, that he comes to find it worse than
death Instead of deterring, transportation tempts to crime;;
instead of reforming, it debases the bad, and confirms in
villany the already infamous. To every bad man it gives
the worst companions; the infamous are to be reformed by
association with the vile ; while its effects upon the colonies
are described in every petition of the settlers, and testified to
by the whole history of our plantations in the antipodes, and by
the present condition of West Australia. We have come at
last to transportation in its most limited and restricted sense ;
the only remaining step is to be quit of it altogether.*

In conjunction with all punishment, we should secure some
means of separating the men one from another as soon as
the actual punishment is terminated : to settle them on land, to
settle them with wives, where possible, should be our object. The
work which really has in it something of reformation is that
which a man has to do, not in order that he may avoid whip-
ping, but that he may escape starvation; and it is from this
point of view that transportation is defensible. A man, however
bad, will generally become a useful member of society and a not
altogether neglectful father if allowed to settle upon land away
from his old companions ; but morbid tendencies of every kind
are strengthened by close association with others who are labour-
ing under a like infirmity : and where the former convicts are
allowed to hang together in towns, nothing is to be expected

* It is now at an end, never, it is to be hoped, to be revived by us,

CHAP, mi.] TRANSPORTATION. 377

better than that which is actually found — namely, a state of
society where wives speedily become as villanous as their hus-
bands, and where children are brought up to emulate their fathers'
crimes.

To keep the men separate from each other, after the expira-
tion of the sentence, we need to send the convicts to a fairly
populous country, whence arises this great difficulty : if we
send convicts to a populous colony, we are met at once by a cry
that we are forcing the workmen of the colony into a one-sided
competition ; that we are offering an unbearable insult to the
free population ; that, in attempting to reform the felon, by
allowing him to be absorbed into the colonial society, we are
degrading and corrupting the whole community on the chance
of possible benefit to our English villain. On the other hand,
if we send our convicts to an uninhabited land, such as New
South Wales and Tasmania were, such as West Australia is
now, we build up an artificial Pandemonium, whither we convey
at the public cost the pick and cream of the ruffians of the
world, to form a community of which each member must be
sufficiently vile of himself to corrupt a nation.

If by care the difficulty of which I have spoken can be
avoided, transportation might be replaced by short sentences,
solitary confinement, and low diet, to be followed by forced
exile, under regulations, to some selected colony, such as the
Ghauts of Eastern Africa, opposite to Madagascar, or the high-
lands that skirt the Zambesi River. Exile after punishment
may often be the only way of providing for convicts who would
otherwise be forced to return to their former ways. The diffi-
culties in the path of discharged convicts seeking employment
are too terrible for them not to accept joyfully a plan for emi-
gration to a country where they are unknown.

In Western Australia transportation has not been made sub-
servient to colonization, and both in consequence have failed.

On going on board the Bombay at King George's Sound, I
at once found myself in the East. The captain's crew of
Malays, the native cooks in long white gowns, the Bombay
serangs in dark blue turbans, red cummerbunds, and green or
yellow trousers ; the negro or Abyssinian stokers ; the pas-
sengers in coats of China-grass; the Hindoo deck-sweepers

378 GREATER BRITAIN. [CMA.P. xm.

playing on their tom-toms in the intervals of work ; the punkahs
below ; the Hindostanee names for everything on deck ; and,
above all, the general indolence of everybody, all told of a new
world.

A convict clerk superintended the coaling, which took place
before we left the harbour for Ceylon, and I remarked that the
dejection of his countenance exceeded that of the felon-
labourers who worked in irons on the quay. There is a wide-
spread belief in England that unfair favour is shown to "gentle-
men convicts." This is simply not the case ; every educated
prisoner is employed at in-door work, for which he is suited, and
not at road-making, in which he might be useless ; but there
are few cases in which he would not wish to exchange a
position full of hopeless degradation for that of an out-door
labourer, who passes through his daily routine drudgery (far
from the prison) unknown, and perhaps in his fancy all but
free. The longing to change the mattock for the pen is the
result of envy, and confined to those who, if listened to, would
prove incapable of pursuing the pen-driver's occupation.

Under a fair and freshening breeze, we left, the port of
Albany, happy to escape from a gaol the size of India, even
those of us who had been forced to pass only a few days in
West Australia.

J79

CHAPTER XIV.
AUSTRALIA.

PACING the deck with difficulty, as the ship tore through the
lava-coloured seas, before a favouring gale that caught us off
Cape Lewin, some of us discussed the prospects of the great
Southland as a whole.

In Australia, it is often said, we have a second America in
its infancy ; but it may be doubted whether we have not become
so used to trace the march of empire on a westward course,
through Persia and Assyria, Greece and Rome, then by Germany
to England and America, that we are too readily prepared to
accept the probability of its onward course to the Pacific.

The progress of Australia has been singularly rapid. In
1830, her population was under 40,000 ; in 1860, it numbered
1,500)000 ; nevertheless, it is questionable how far the progress
will continue. The natural conditions of America in Australia
are exactly reversed. All the best lands of Australia are on
her coast, and these are already taken up by settlers. Australia
has three-quarters the area of Europe, but it is doubtful whether
she will ever support a dense population throughout even half
her limits. The uses of the northern territory have yet to be
discovered, and the interior of the continent is far fiom being
tempting to the settler. Upon the whole, it seems likely that
almost all the imperfectly-known regions of Australia will in
time be occupied by pastoral Crown tenants, but that the area
of agricultural operations is not likely to admit of indefinite
extension. The central district of Australia, to the extent,
perhaps, of half the entire continent, lies too far north for
winter rains, too far south for tropical wet seasons, and in these
vast solitudes agriculture may be pronounced impossible, sheep?

j«o GREATER bEITATN. [CHAI siv.

fanning difficult. There will be no difficulty in retaining in
tanks, or raising by means of wells, sufficient water for sheep
and cattle-stations, and the wool, tallow, and even meat, will be
carried by those railways for which the country is admirably
fitted, while the construction of locks upon the Murray and its
tributaries will enable steamers to carry the whole trade of the
Riverina. So far, all is well ; but the arable lands of Australia
are limited by the rains, and apparently the limit is a sadly
narrow one.

Once in a while, a heavy winter rain falls in the interior ;
grass springs up, the lagoons are filled, the up-country squatters
make their fortunes, and all goes prosperously for a time.
Accounts reach the coast cities of the astonishing fertility of
the interior, and hundreds of settlers set off to the remotest
districts. Two or three years of drought then follow, and all
the more enterprising squatters are soon ruined, with a gain,
however, sometimes of a few thousand square miles of country
to civilization.

Hitherto the Australians have not made so much as they
should have done of the country that is within their reach.
The want of railroads is incredible. There are but some 400
miles of railway in all Australia — far less than the amount pos-
sessed by the single infant state of Wisconsin. The sums spent
upon the Victorian lines have deterred the colonists from com-
pleting their railway system. Ten million pounds sterling were
spent upon 200 miles of road, through easy country in which
the land cost nothing. The United States have made nearly
40,000 miles of railroad for less than ^300,000,000 sterling;
Canada made her 2000 miles for ^20,000,000, or ten times as
much railroad as Victoria for only twice the money. Cuba has
already more miles of railroad than all Australia.

Small as are the inhabited portions of Australia when com-
pared with Uie corresponding divisions of the United States,
this country nevertheless is huge enough. The part of Queens-
land already peopled is five times larger than the United
Kingdom. South Australia and West Australia are each of
them nearly as large as British India, but of these colonies the
greater part is desert. Fertile Victoria, the size of Great
Britain, is only a thirty-fourth part of Australia.

CHAP, xiv.] AUST11AL1A. 381

In face of the comparatively small amount of good agricul-
tural country known to exist in Australia, the disp: oportionate
size of the great cities shows out more clearly than ever. Even
Melbourne, when it comes to be examined, has too much the
air of a magnified Hobarton, of a city with no country at its
back, of a steam-hammer set up to crack nuts. Queensland
is at present free from the burthen of gigantic cities, but then
Queensland is subject to the greater danger of becoming what
is in reality a slave republic.

Morally and intellectually, at all events, the colonies are
thriving. A literature is springing up, a national character is
being grafted upon the good English stock. What shape the
Australian mind will take is at present somewhat doubtful. In
addition to considerable shrewdness and a purely Saxon capa-
city and willingness to combine for local objects, we find in
Australia an admirable love of simple mirth, and a serious
distaste for prolonged labour in one direction ; while the down-
rightness and determination in the pursuit of truth, remarkable
in America, are less noticeable here.

The extravagance begotten of the tradition of convict times
has not been without effect, and the settlers waste annually, it
is computed, food which would support in Europe a population
of twice their numbers. This wastefulness is, however, in some
degree a consequence of the necessary habits of a pastoral
people. The 8000 tons of tallow exported annually by the
Australias are said to represent the boiling down of sheep
enough to feed half a million of people for a twelvemonth.

Austialian manners, like the American, resemble the French
rather than the British — a resemblance traceable, perhaps, to
the essential democracy of Australia, America, and France.
One surface point which catches the eye in any Australian ball-
room, or on any racecourse, is clearly to be referred to the
habit of mind produced by democracy — the fact, namely, that
the women dress with great expense and care, the men with
none whatever. This, as a rule, is true of Americans, Austra-
ians, and French.

Unlike as are the Australians to the British, there is never-
theless a singular mimicry of British forms and ceremonies in
the colonies, which is extended to the most trifling details of

382 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. XIT.

public life. Twice in Australia was I invited to ministerial
dinners, given to mark the approaching close of the session ;
twice also was I present at university celebrations, in which
home whimsicalities Were closely copied. The Governors'
messages to the Colonial Parliaments are travesties of those
which custom in England leads us to call the " Queen's." The
very phraseology is closely followed. We find Sir J. Manners
Sutton gravely saying : " The representatives of the Govern-
ment of New South Wales, and of my Government have agreed
to an arrangement on the border duties . . ." The "my "in
a democratic country like Victoria strikes a stranger as pre-
eminently incongruous, if not absurd.

The imitation of Cambridge forms by the University of
Sydney is singularly close. One almost expects to see the
familiar blue gown of the " bull-dog" thrown across the arm of
the first college servant met within its precincts. Chancellor,
Vice-chancellor, Senate, Syndicates, and even Proctors, all are
here in the antipodes. Registrar, professors, " seniors," fees,
fines, and " petitions with the University seal attached ;"
" Board of Classical Studies " — the whole corporation sits in
borrowed plumage ; the very names of the colleges are being
imitated: we find already a St. John's. The Calendar reads
like a parody on the volume issued every March by Messrs.
Deighton. Rules upon matriculation, upon the granting of
testamurs; prize-books stamped with college arms are named,
ad eundem degrees are known, and we have imitations of
phraseology even in the announcement of prizes to " the most
distinguished candidates for honours in each of the aforesaid
schools," and in the list of subjects for the Moral Science
tripos. Lent Term, Trinity Term, Michaelmas Term, take the,
place of the Spring, Summer, and Fall Terms of the less pre-
tentious institutions in America, and the height of absurdity is
reached in the regulations upon " academic costume," and on
the " respectful salutation " by undergraduates of the " fellows
and professors " of the University. The situation on a hot-
wind day of a member of the Senate, in " black silk gown, with
hood of scarlet cloth edged with white fur, and lined with blue
silk, black velvet trencher cap," all in addition to his ordinary
clothing, it is to be presumed, can be imagined only by those

CHAP, xiv.] AUSTRALIA. 383

who know what hot winds are. We English are great accli-
raatisers : we have carried trial by jury to Bengal, tenant-right
to Oude, and caps and gowns to be worn over loongee and
paejama at Calcutta University. Who are we, that we should
cry out against the French for "carrying France about with
them everywhere?"

The objects of the founders are set forth in the charter as
" the advancement of religion and morality, and the promotion
of useful knowledge ;" but as there is no theological faculty, no
religious test or exercise whatever, the philosophy of the first
portion of the phrase is not easily understood.

In no Western institutions is the radicalism of Western
thought so thoroughly revealed as in the Universities ; in no
English colonial institutions is Conservatism so manifest. The
contrast between Michigan and Sydney is far more striking
than that between Harvard and old Cambridge.

Of the religious position of Australia there is little to be
said : the Wesleyans, Catholics, and Presbyterians are stronger,
and the other denominations weaker, than they are at home.
The general mingling of incongruous objects and of conflicting
races, characteristic of colonial life, extends to religious build-
ings. The graceful Wesleyan church, the Chinese joss-house,
and the Catholic cathedral stand not far apart in Melbourne.
In Australia, the mixture of blood is not yet great. In South
Australia, where it is most complete, the Catholics and Wes-
leyans have considerable strength. Anglicanism is naturally
strongest where the race is most exclusively British — in Tas-
mania and New South Wales.

As far as the coast tracts are concerned, Australia, as will be
seen from what has been said of the individual colonies, is
rapidly ceasing to be a land of great tenancies, and becoming
a land of small freeholds, each cultivated by its owner. It
need hardly be pointed out that, in the interests of the country
and of the race, this is a happy change. When English rural
labourers commence to fully realize the misery of their position,
they will find not only America, but Australia also, open to
them as a refuge and future home. Looming in the distance,
we still, however, see the American problem of whether the
Englishman car. live out of England. Can he thrive except

184

GREATER BRLTAIN.

[CHAP. XIV.

where mist and damp preserve the juices of his frame ? He
comes from the fogs of the Baltic shores, and from the Flemish
lowlands; gains in vigour in the south island of New Zealand.
In Australia and America — hot and dry — the type has already-
changed. Will it eventually disappear ? .

It is still an open question whether the change of type
among the English in America and Australia is a climatic
adaptation on the part of nature, or a temporary divergence
produced by abnormal causes, and capable of being modified
by care.

Before we had done our talk, the ship was pooped by a
green sea, which, curling in over her taffrail, swept her decks
from end to end, and our helmsmen, although regular old
" hard-a-weather " fellows, had difficulty in keeping her upon
her course. It was the last of the gale, and when we made up
our beds upon the skylights, the heavens were clear of scud,
though the moon was still craped with a ceaseless roll of cloud.

CHAPTER XV.
COLONIES.

WHEN a Briton takes a survey of the colonies, he finds much
matter for surprise in the one-sided nature of the partnership
which exists between the mother and the daughter lands. No
reason presents itself to him why our artisans and merchants
should be taxed in aid of populations far more wealthy than
our own, who have not, as we have, millions of paupers to
support We at present tax our humblest classes, we weaken
our defences, we scatter our troops * and fleets, and lay our-
selves open to panics such as those of 1853 and 1859, in order
to protect against imaginary dangers the Australian gold-digger
and Canadian farmer. There is something ludicrous in the
idea of taxing St. Giles's for the support of Melbourne, and
making Dorsetshire agricultural labourers pay the cost of
defending New Zealand colonists in Maori wars.f

It is possible that the belief obtains in Britain among the
least educated classes of the community that colonial expenses
are rapidly decreasing, if they have not already wholly dis-
appeared; but in fact they have for some years past been
steadily and continuously growing in amount. +

As long as we choose to keep up such propugnacula as
Gibraltar, Malta, and Beimuda, we must pay roundly for them,
as we also must for such costly luxuries as our Gold Coast
settlements for the suppression of the slave-trade ; but if we
confine the term " colonies " to English-speaking, white-in-
habited, and self-governed lands, and exclude on the one hand

• Now in far less degree.

t A system now happily at an end

J Siuce 1868 this is so no longei.

2 C

?86 GKEATEU BRITAIN. [CHAT. xv.

garrisons such as Gibraltar, and on the other mere dependen-
cies like the West Indies and Ceylon, we find that our true
colonies in North America, Australia, Polynesia, and South
Africa, involve us nominally in yearly charges of almost two
millions sterling, and, really, in untold expenditure.

Canada is in all ways the most flagrant case. She draws
from us some three millions annually for her defence, she makes
no contribution towards the cost ; she relies mainly on us to
defend a frontier of 4000 miles, and she excludes our goods by
prohibitive duties at her ports. In short, colonial expenses
which, rightly or wrongly, our fathers bore (and that not un-
grudgingly) when they enjoyed a monopoly of colonial trade,
are borne by us in face of colonial prohibition. What the true
cost to us of Canada may be is unfortunately an open question,
and the loss by the weakening of our home forces we have no
means of computing ; but when we consider that, on a fair
statement of the case, Canada would be debited with the cost
of a large portion of the half-pay and recruiting services, of
Horse Guards and War Office expenses, of arms, accoutre-
ments, barracks, hospitals, and stores, and also with the gigantic
expenses of two of our naval squadrons, we cannot but admit
that we must pay at least three millions a year for the hatred
that the Canadians profess to bear towards the United States.
Whatever may be the case, however, with regard to Canada,
less fault is to be found with the cost of the Australian colonies.
If they bore a portion of the half-pay and recruiting expenses
as well as the cost of the troops actually employed among them
in time of peace, and also paid their share in the maintenance
of the British navy, — a share to increase with the increase of
their merchant shipping — there would be little to desire, unless,
indeed, we should wish that, in exchange for a check upon im-
perial braggadocio and imperial waste, the Australias should also
contribute towards the expenses of imperial wars.*

No reason can be shown for our spending millions on the
defence of Canada against the Americans or in aiding the New
Zealand colonists against the Maories that will not apply to
their aiding us in case of a European war with France, control
being given to their representatives over our public action in

* Victoria, now, much to her honour, supports a Colonial Navy.

CHAP, xv.] COLONIES. 387

questions of imperial concern. Without any such control over
imperial action, the old American colonists were well content to
do their share of fighting in imperial wars. In 1689, in 1702,
and in 1744, Massachusetts attacked the French, and taking
from them Nova Scotia and others of their new plantations,
handed them over to Great Britain. Even when the tax time
came, Massachusetts, while declaring that the English Parlia-
ment had'no right to tax colonies, went on to say that the king
could inform them of the exigencies of the public service, and
that they were ready " to provide for them if required."

It is not likely, however, nowadays, that our colonists would,
for any long stretch of time, engage to aid us in our purely
European wars. Australia would scarcely feel herself deeply
interested in the guarantee of Luxemburg, nor Canada in the
affairs of Servia. The fact that we in Britain paid our share —
or rather nearly the whole cost — of the Maori wars would be
no argument to an Australian, but only an additional proof to
him of our extraordinary folly. We have been educated into a
habit of paying with complacency other people's bills — not so
the Australian settler.

As far as Australia is concerned, our soldiers are not used as
troops at all. The colonists like the show of the red-coats, and
the military duties are made up partly of guard-of-honour work,
and partly of the labours of police. The colonists well know
that in time of war we should immediately withdraw our troops,
and they trust wholly in their volunteers and the colonial
marine.

So long as we choose to allow the system to continue, the
colonists are well content to reap the benefit. When we at last
decide that it shall cease, they will reluctantly consent. It is
more than doubtful whether, if we were to insist to the utmost
upon our rights as towards our Southern colonies, they would
do more than grumble and consent to our demands ; and there
is no chance whatever of our asking for more than our simple
due.

When you talk to an intelligent Australian, you can always
see that he fears that separation would be made the excuse for
the equipment of a great and costly Australian fleet — not more
necessary then than now — and that, however he may talk, he

2 c 2

388 GEEATEB BRITAIN. [CHAP. xv.

would, rather than separate from England, at least do his duty
by her.

The fear of conquest of the Australian colonies if we left
them to themselves is on the face of it ridiculous. It is suffi-
cient, perhaps, to say that the old American colonies, when
they had but a million and a half of people, defended them-
selves successfully against the then all-powerful French, and
that there is no instance of a self-protected English colony
being conquered by the foreigner. The American colonies
valued so highly their independence of the old country in the
matter of defence that they petitioned the Crown to be allowed
to fight for themselves, and called the British army by the plain
name of "grievance."

As for our so-called defence of the colonies, in war-time we
defend ourselves : we defend the colonies only during peace.
In war-time they are ever left to shift for themselves, and they
would undoubtedly be better fit to do so were they in the habit
of maintaining their military establishments in time of peace.
The present system weakens us and them — us, by taxes and by
the withdrawal of our men and ships j the colonies, by prevent-
ing the development of that self-reliance which is requisite to
form a nation's greatness.* The successful encountering of
difficulties is the marking feature of the national character of
the English, and we can hardly expect a nation which has never
encountered any, or which has been content to see them met
by others, ever to become great In short, as matters now
stand, the colonies are a source of military weakness to us, and
our " protection " of them is a source of danger to the colonists.
No doubt, there are still among us, men who would have wished
to have seen America continue in union with England, on the
principle on which the Russian conscripts are chained each to
an old man — to keep her from going too fast — and who now
consider it our duty to defend our colonies at whatever cost, on
account of the " prestige " which attaches to the somewhat pre-
carious tenure of these great lands. With such men it is im-
possible for colonial reformers to argue : the standpoints are
* Immense steps have been taken towards putting an end to this system,
but all that is said here applies still to our relations with our twc great
colonies of South Africa.

, xv.] COLOK1E8. 389

wholly different. To those, however, who admit the injustice
of the present system to the tax-payers of the mother- country,
but who fear that her merchants would suffer by its disturbance,
inasmuch as, in their belief, action on our part would lead to a
disruption of the tie, we may plead that, even should separation
be the result, we should be none the worse off for its occur-
rence. The retention of colonies at almost any cost has been,
defended — so far as it has been supported by argument at all
— on the ground that the connexion conduces to trade, to
which argument it is sufficient to answer that no one has ever
succeeded in showing what effect upon trade the connexion
can have, and that as excellent examples to the contrary we
have the fact that our trade with the Ionian Islands has in-
creased since their annexation to the kingdom of Greece, and
a much more striking fact than even this — namely, that while
the trade with England of the Canadian Confederation is only
four-elevenths of its total external trade, or little more than
one-third, the English trade of the United States was in 1860
(before the war) nearly .two-thirds of their total external trade,
in 1 86 1 more than two-thirds, and in 1866 (first year after the
war) again four-sevenths of the total trade. Common institu-
tions, common freedom, and common tongue have evidently far
more to do with trade than union has ; and for purposes of com-
merce and civilization, America is a truer colony of Britain than
is Canada.

It would not be difficult, were it necessary, to multiply ex-
amples whereby to prove that trade with a country does not
appear to be affected by union with or separation from it.
Egypt (even when we carefully exclude from the returns Indian
produce in transport) sends us nearly all such produce as she
exoorts. notwithstanding that the French largely control the
government,* and that we have much less footing in he country
than the Italians, and no more than the Austrians or Spanish.
Our trade with Australia means that the Australians want some-
thing of us and that we need something of them, and that we
exchange with them our produce as we do in a larger degree
with the Americans, the Germans, and the French.

The trade argument being met, and it being remembered
* Now, since the German war, no lonjer.

390 GHEATER BRITAIN. [CHAP, IT.

that our colonies are no more an outlet for our surplus popula-
tion than they would be if the Great Mogul ruled over them, as
is seen by the fact that of every twenty people who leave the
United Kingdom, one goes to Canada, two to Australia, and,
sixteen to the United States, we come to the " argument " which
consists in the word " prestige." When examined, this cry seems
to mean that, in the opinion of the utterer, extent of empire is
power — a doctrine under which Brazil ought to be nineteen and
a half times, and China twenty-six times as powerful as France.
Perhaps the best answer to the doctrine is a simple contradic-
tion: those who have read history with most care well know
that at all times extent of empire has been weakness. England's
jeal empire was small enough in 1650, yet it is rather doubtful
thether her " prestige " ever reached the height it did while the
£romwellian admirals swept the seas. The idea conveyed by
the words " mother of free nations " is every bit as good as that
contained in the cry " prestige," and the argument that, as the
colonists are British subjects, we have no right to cast them
adrift so long as they wish to continue citizens, is evidently no
answer to those who merely urge that the colonists should pay
their own policemen.

It may, perhaps, be contended that the possession of
" colonies " tends to preserve us from the curse of small island
countries, the dwarfing of mind which would otherwise make us
Guernsey a little magnified. If this be true, it is a powerful
argument in favour of continuance in the present system. It
is a question, however, whether our real preservation from the
insularity we deprecate is not to be found in the possession of
true colonies — of plantations such as America, in short — rather
than in that of mere dependencies. That which raises us above
the provincialism of citizenship of little England is our citizen-
ship of the greater Saxondom which includes all that is best and
wisest in the world.

From the foundation, separation would be harmless, does not
of necessity follow the conclusion, separation is to be desired.
This much only is clear — that we need not hesitate to demand
that Australia should do her duty.

With the more enlightened thinkers of England, separation
from the colonies has for many years been a favourite idea, but

CHAP. XT.] COLONIES. J9*

as regards the Auslralias it would hardly be advisable. If we
allow that it is to the interest both of our race and of the world
that the Australias should prosper, we have to ask whether they
would do so in a higher degree if separated from the mother
country than if they remained connected with her and with
each other by a federation. It has often been said that, instead
of the varying relations which now exist between Britain and
America, we should have seen a perfect friendship had we but
permitted the American colonies to go their way in peace ; but
the example does not hold in the case of Australia, which is by
no means wishful to go at all.

Under separation we should, perhaps, find the colonies better
emigration-fields for our surplus population than they are at
present Many of our emigrants who flock to the United States
are attracted by the idea that they are going to become citizens
of a new nation instead of dependents upon an old one. On
the separation of Australia from England we might expect that
a portion of these sentimentalists would be diverted from a
plantation necessarily jealous of us so long as we hold Canada,
to one which from accordance of interests is likely to continue
friendly or allied. This argument, however, would have no
weight with those who desire the independence of Canada, and
who look upon America as still our colony.

Separation, we may then conclude, though infinitely better
than a continuance of the existing one-sided tie, would, in a
healthier state of. our relations, not be to the interest of Britain,
although it would perhaps be morally beneficial to Australia.
Any relation, however, would be preferable to the existing one
of mutual indifference and distrust. Recognising the fact that
Australia has come of age, and calling on her, too, to recognise
it, we should say to the Australian colonists : " Our present
system cannot continue ; will you amend it, or separate ? " *
The worst thing that can happen to us is that we should
" drift " blindly into separation.

After all, the strongest of the arguments in favour of separa-
tion is the somewhat paradoxical one that it would bring us a
step nearer to the virtual confederation of the English race.

* It has been amended and is now fairly satisfactory, though New South
Wales should be made to do as Victoria has done.

PART IV.

ASIA.

A REGULAR and uniform system of spelling of native names
and othei words has lately been brought into common use in
India, and adopted by the Government. Not without hesita-
tion I have decided upon ignoring this improvement, and con-
fining myself to spellings known to and used by the English in
England, for whom especially I am writing.

I am aware that there is no system in the spelling, and that
it is scientifically absurd ; nevertheless, the new Government
spelling is not yet sufficiently well understood in England to
warrant its use in a book intended for general circulation.
The scientific spelling is not always an improvement to the
eye, moreover : Talookdars of Oude may not be right, but it is
a neater phrase than " Taalulehdars of Awdh ;" and it will
probably be long before we in England write " kuli " for coolie,
or adopt the spelling " Tatd hordes."

395

CHAPTER I.
MARITIME CEYLON.

WE failed to sight the Island of Cocoas, a territory where John
Ross is king — a worthy Scotchman, who having settled down
in mid-ocean, some hundreds of miles from any port, proceeded
to annex himself to Java and the Dutch. On being rem^n-
strated with, he was made to see his error ; and, being
appointed governor of and consul to himself and labourers,
now hoists the union-jack, while his island has a red line drawn
under its name upon the map. Two days after quitting John
Ross's latitudes, we crossed the line in the heavy noonday of
the equatorial belt of calms. The sun itself passed the equator
the same day ; so, after having left Australia at the end of
autumn, I suddenly found myself in Asia in the early spring.
Mist obscured the skies except at dawn and sunset, when there
was a clear air, in which floated cirro-cumuli with flat bases —
clouds cut in half, as it seemed — and we were all convinced
that Homer must have seen the Indian Ocean, so completely
did the sea in the equatorial belt realize his epithet " purple "
or " wine-dark." All day long the flying fish — " those good
and excellent creatures of God," as Drake styled them — were
skimming over the water on every side. The Elizabethan
captain, who knew their delicacy of taste, attributed their free-
dom from the usual s'ime of fish, and their wholesome nature,
to " their continued exercise in both air and water." The
heat was great, and I made the discovery that Australians as
well as Americans can put their feet above their heads. It
may be asserted that the height above the deck of the feet of
passengers on board ocean steamers varies directly as the heat,
and inversely as the number of hours before dinner.

In the afternoon of the day we crossed the line, we sighted a
large East Indiaman lying right in our course, and so little way

396 GREATER BR1TATX. [cit\P.i

was she making that, on coming up with her, we had to port
our helm, in order not to run her down. She hailed us, and
we lay-to while she sent a boat aboard us with her mail ; for
although she was already a month out from Calcutta and
bound for London, our letters would reach home before she
was round the Cape — a singular commentary upon the use of
sailing ships in the Indian seas. Before the boat had left our
side, the ships had floated so close together, through attraction,
that we had to make several revolutions with the screw in order
to prevent collision.

When we, who were all sleeping upon deck, were aroused by
the customary growl from the European quartermaster of
" Four o'clock, sir ! Going to swab decks, sir ! Get up, sir !"
given with the flare of the lantern in our eyes, we were still
more than a hundred miles from Galle ; but before the sun had
risen, we caught sight of Adam's Peak, a purple mass upon the
northern sky, and soon we were racing with a French steamer
from Saigon, and with a number of white-sailed native craft
from the Maldives. Within a few hours, we were at anchor in
a small bay, surrounded with lofty cocoa palms, in which were
lying, tossed by a rolling swell, some dozen huge steamers,
yard-arm to yard-arm — the harbour of Point de Galle. Every
ship was flying her ensign, and in the damp hot air the old
tattered union-jacks seemed brilliant crimson, and the dull
green of the cocoa palms became a dazzling emerald. The
scene wanted but the bright plumage of the Panama macaws.

Once seated in the piazza of the Oriental Company's hotel,
the best managed in the East, I had before me a curious scene.
Along the streets were pouring silent crowds of tall and graceful
girls, as we at the first glance supposed, wearing white petti-
coats and boddices ; their hair carried off the face with a
decorated hoop, and caught at the back by a high tortoise-shell
comb. As they drew near, moustaches began to show, and I
saw that they were men, whilst walking with them were women
naked to the waist, combless, and far more rough and " manly "
than their husbands. Petticoat and chignon are male institu-
tions in Ceylon, and time after time I had to. look twice before I
could fix the passer's sex. My rule at last became to set down
everybody that was womanly as a man, and everybody that was

CHAP. L] MARITIME CEYLON. 397

manly as a woman. Cinghalese, Kanclians, Tamils from Soutn
India, and Moormen with crimson caftans and shaven crowns,
formed the body of the great crowd : but, besides these, there
were Portuguese, Chinese, Jews, Arabs, Parsees, Englishmen,
Malays, Dutchmen, and half-caste burghers, and now and then
a veiled Arabian woman or a Veddah — one of the aboriginal
inhabitants of the isle. Ceylon has never been independent,
and in a singular mixture of races her ports bear testimony to
the number of the foreign conquests.

Two American missionaries were among the passers-by, but
one of them, detecting strangers, came up to the piazza in
search of news. There had been no loss of national character-
istics in these men ; — they were brim-full of the mixture of
earnestness and quaint profanity which distinguishes the New
England puritan : one of them described himself to me as
"just a kind of journeyman soul-saver, like."

The Australian strangers were not long left unmolested by
more serious intruders than grave Vermonters. The cry of
" baksheesh " — an Arabian word that goes from Gibraltar to
China, and from Ceylon to the Khyber Pass, and which has
reached us in the form of " boxes" in our phrase " Christmas-
boxes " — was the first native word I heard in the East, at Galle,
as it was afterwards the last, at Alexandria. One of the beggars
was an Albino, fair as a child in a Hampshire lane ; one of
those strange sports of nature from whom Cinghalese tradition
asserts the European races to be sprung.

The beggars were soon driven off by the hotel servants, and
better licensed plunderers began their work. " Ah safeer, ah
rupal, ah imral, ah mooney stone, ah opal, ah amtit, ah !" was
the cry from every quarter, and jewel-sellers of all the nations
of the East descended on us in a swarm. " Me givee you
written guarantee dis real stone ;" " Yes, dat real stone ; but
dis good stone — dat no good stone — no water. Ah, see !"
" Dat no good stone. Ah, sahib, you tell good stone ; all dese
bad stone, reg'lar England stone. You go by next ship ? No ?
Ah, den you come see me shop. Dese ship-passenger stone —
humbuk stone. Ship gone, den you come me shop ; see good
stone. When you come ? eh ? when you come ?" " Ah safeer,
ah catty-eye, ah pinkee collal !" Meanwhile every Galle-

398 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAF.I.

dwelling European, at the bar of the hotel, was adding to the
din by shouting to the native servants, " Boy, turn out these
fellows, and stop their noise." This cry of " boy" is a relic of the
old Dutch times : it was the Hollander's term for his slave, and
hence for every member of the inferior race. The first servant
that I heard called " boy" was a tottering white-haired old man.

The gems of Ceylon have long been famed. One thousand
three hundred and seventy years ago, the Chinese records tell
us that Ceylon, then tributary to the empire, sent presents to
the Brother of the Moon, one of the gifts being a " lapis-lazuli
spittoon." It is probable that some portion of the million and
a half pounds sterling which arc annually absorbed in this small
island, but four-fifths the size of Ireland, is consumed in the
setting of the precious stones for native use ; every one you
meet wears four or five heavy silver rings, and sovereigns are
melted down to make gold ornaments.

Rushing away from the screaming crowd of pedlars, I went
with some of my Australian friends to stroll upon the ramparts,
and enjoy the evening salt breeze. We met several bodies of
white-faced Europeans, sauntering like ourselves, and dressed
like us in white trousers and loose white jackets and pith hats.
What we looked like I do not know, but they resembled ships'
stewards. At last it struck me that they were soldiers, and
upon inquiring I found that these washed-out dawdlers repre-
sented a British regiment of the line. I was .by this time used
to see linesmen out of scarlet, having beheld a parade in bush-
ranger-beards, and blue-serge " jumpers " at Taranaki in New
Zealand ; but one puts up easier with the soldier-bushranger,
than with the soldier-steward.

The climate of the day had been exquisite with its bright air
and cooling breeze, and I had begun to think that those who
knew Acapulco and Echuca could afford to laugh at the East,
with its thermometer at 88P. The reckoning came at night,
however, for by dark all the breeze was gone, and the thermo-
meter, instead of falling, had risen to 90° when I lay down to
moan and wait for dawn. As I was dropping off to sleep at
about four o'clock, a native came round and closed the doors,
to shut out the dangerous land-breeze that springs up at that
hour. Again, at half-past five, it was cooler, and I had begun

CIIAP. i.J MARITIME CEYLOF. 399

to doze, when a cannon-shot, fired apparently under my bed,
brought me upon my feet with something more than a start
I remembered the saying of the Western boy before Petersburg,
when he heard for the first time the five o'clock camp-gun, and
failed to his next neighbour at the fire, " Say, Bill, did you hap
to hear how partic'lar loud the day broke just now ?" for it was
the morning-gun, which in Ceylon is always fired at the same
time, there being less than an hour's difference between the
longest and shortest days. Although it was still pitch dark, the
bugles began to sound the reveille on every side — in the infantry
lines, the artillery barracks, and the lines of the Malay regiment,
the well-known Ceylon Rifles. Ten minutes afterwards, when
I had bathed by lamplight, I was eating plantains and taking
my morning tea in a cool room lit by the beams of the morning
sun, so short is the April twilight in Ceylon.

It is useless to consult the thermometer about heat : a
European can labour in the open air in South Australia with
the thermometer at no°in the shade, while, with a thermometer
at 88°, the nights are unbearable in Ceylon. To discover
whether the climate of a place be really hot, examine its news-
papers ; and if you find the heat recorded, you may make up
your mind that it is a variable climate, but if no " remarkable
heat " or similar announcements appear, then you may be sure
that you are in a permanently hot place. It stands to reason
that no one in the tropics ever talks of " tropical heat."

In so equable a climate, the apathy of the Cinghalese is not
surprising ; but they are not merely lazy, they are a cowardly,
effeminate, and revengeful race. They sleep and smoke, and
smoke and sleep, rousing themselves only once in the day to
snatch a bowl of curry and rice, or to fleece a white man ; and
so slowly do the people run the race of life that even elephan-
tiasis, common here, does not seem to put the sufferer far
behind his fellow-men. Buddhism is no rnvstery when ex-
pounded under this climate. See a few Cinghalese stretched
in the shade of a cocoa-palm, and you can conceive Buddha
sitting cross-legged for ten thousand years contemplating his
own perfection.

The second morning that I spent in Galle, the captain of the
Bombay was kind enough to send his gig for me to the landing-

400 GREATER BRITAIN. Lcnxe.l

steps at dawn, and his Malay crew soon rowed me to .he ship,
where the captain joined me, and we pulled across the harbour
to Watering-place Point, and bathed in the shallow sea, out of
the reach of sharks. When we had dressed, we went on to a
jetty, to look into the deep water just struck by the rising sun.
I should have marvelled at the translucency of the waters had
not the awful clearness with which the bottoms of the Canadian
lakes stand revealed in evening light been fresh within my
memory, but here the bottom was fairly paved with corallines
of inconceivable brilliancy of colour, and tenanted by still more
gorgeous fish. Of the two that bore the palm, one was a little
fish of mazarine blue, without a speck of any other colour, and
perfect too in shape ; the second, a silver fish, with a band of
soft brown velvet round its neck, and another about its tail.
In a still more sheltered cove the fish were so thick that dozens
of Moors were throwing into the water, with the arm-twist of a
fly-fisher, bare hooks, which they jerked through the shoal and
into the air, never failing to bring them up clothed with a fish,
caught most times by the fin.

In the evening, two of us tried a native dinner, at a house
where Cinghalese gentlemen dine when they come into Galle
on business. Our fare was as follows : — First course : a curry
of the delicious seir-fish, a sort of mackerel ; a prawn curry ; a
bread-fruit and cocoa-nut curry ; a Brinjal curry, and a dish
made of jack-fruit, garlic, and mace; all washed down by iced
water. Second course : plantains, and very old arrack in
thimble-glasses, followed by black coffee. Of meat there was
no sign, as the Cinghalese rarely touch it ; and, although we
liked our vegetarian dinner, my friend passed a criticism in
action on it by dining again at the hotel-ordinary one hour
later. We agreed, too, that the sickly smell of cocoa-nut would
cleave to us for weeks.

Starting with an Australian friend, at the dawn of my third
day in the island, I took the coach by the coast road to
Columbo. We drove along a magnificent road in an avenue
of giant cocoa-nut palms, with the sea generally within easy
sight, and with a native hut at each few yards. Every two or
three miles, the road crossed a lagoon, alive with bathers, and
near the bridge was generally a village, bazaar, and Buddhist

CHAP, i.] MARITIME CEYLON. 401

temple, built pagoda-shape, and filled with worshippers. The
road was thronged with gaily-dressed Cinghalese ; and now and
again we would pass a Buddhist priest in saffron-coloured robes,
hastening along, his umbrella borne over him by a boy clothed
from top to toe in white. The umbrellas of the priests are of
yellow silk, and shaped like ours, but other natives carry flat-
topped umbrellas, gilt, or coloured red and black. The Cin-
ghalese farmers we met travelling to their temples in carts
drawn by tiny bullocks. Such was the brightness of the air,
that the people, clown to the very beggars, seemed clad in
holiday attire.

As we journeyed on, we began to find more variety in the
scenery and vegetation, and were charmed with the scarlet-
blossomed cotton-tree, and with the areca, or betel-nut palm.
The cocoa-nut groves, too, were carpeted with an undergrowth
of orchids and ipecacuanha, and here and there was a bread-
fruit tree or an hibiscus.

In Ceylon we have retained the Dutch posting system ; and
light coaches, drawn by four or six small horses at a gallop, run
over excellent roads, carrying, besides the passengers, two boys
behind, who shout furiously whenever vehicles obstruct the
mails, and who at night carry torches high in the air, to light
the road. Thus we dashed through the bazaars and cocoa
groves, then across the golden sands covered with rare shells,
and fringed on the one side with the bright blue dancing sea,
dotted with many a white sail, and on the other with deep
green jungle, in which were sheltered dark lagoons. Once in a
while, we would drive out on to a plain, varied by clumps of
fig and tulip trees, and, looking to the east, would sight the
purple mountains of the central range ; then, dashing again
into the thronged bazaars, would see little but the bright palm
trees relieved upon an azure sky. The road is one continuous
village, for the population is twelve times as dense in the
western as in the eastern provinces of Ceylon. No wonder
that ten thousand natives have died of cholera within the last
few months 1 All this dense coast population is supported by
the cocoa-nut, for there are in Ceylon 200,000 acres under
cocoa palms, which yield from seven to eight hundred million
cocoa-nuts a year, and are worth two millions sterling.

2 n

4oj QEEATEK BRITAIN. [CHAP. i.

Near Bentotte, where we had lunched off horrible oysters of
the pearl-yielding kind, we crossed the Kaluganga river, densely
fringed with mangrove, and in its waters saw a python swim-
ming bravely towards the shore. Snakes are not so formidable
as land-leeches, the Cinghalese and planters say, and no one
hears of many persons being bitten, though a great reward for
an antidote to the cobra bite has lately been offered by the
Rajah of Travancore.

As we entered what the early maps style " The Christian
Kyngdom of Colombo," though where they found their Chris-
tians no one knows, our road lay through the cinnamon gardens,
which are going out of cultivation, as they no longer pay,
although the cinnamon laurel is a spice-grove in itself, giving
cinnamon from its bark, camphor from the roots, clove oil from
its leaves. The plant grows wild about the island, and is cut
and peeled by the natives at no cost, save that of children's
labour, which they do not count as cost at all. The scene in
the gardens that still remain was charming: the cinnamon-
laurel bushes contrasted well with the red soil, and the air was
alive with dragon-flies, moths, and winged-beetles, while the
softness of the evening breeze had tempted out the half-caste
Dutch " burgher " families of the city, who were driving and
walking clothed in white, the ladies with their jet hair dressed
with natural flowers. The setting sun threw brightness without
heat into the gay scene.

A friend who had horses ready for us at the hotel where the
mail-coach stopped, said that it was not too late for a ride
through the fort, or European town inside the walls; so,
cantering along the esplanade, where the officers of the garrison
were enjoying their evening ride, we crossed the moat, and
found ourselves in what is perhaps the most graceful street in
the world : — a double range of long low houses of bright white
stone, with deep piazzas, burried in masses of bright foliage, in
which the fire-flies were beginning to play. In the centre of
the fort is an Italian campanile, which serves at once as a
belfry, a clock-tower, and a lighthouse. In the morning, before
sunrise, we climbed this tower for the view. The central range
stood up sharply on the eastern sky, as the sun was still hid
behind it, and to the south-east there towered high the peak

CHAP. I.] MARITIME CEYLOff. 4OJ

where Adam mourned his son a hundred years. In colour,
shape, and height, the Cinghalese Alps resemble the Central
Apennines, and the view from Columbo is singularly like that
from Pesaro on the Adriatic. As we looked landwards from
the campanile, the native town was mirrored in the lake, and
outside the city the white-coated troops were marching by
companies on to the parade-ground, whence we could faintly
hear the distant bands.

Driving back in a carriage, shaped like a street cab, but with
fixed Venetians instead of sides and windows, we visited the
curing establishment of the Ceylon Coffee Company, where
the coffee from the hills is dried and sorted. Thousands of
native girls are employed in coffee-picking at the various stores,
but it is doubted whether the whole of this labour is not wasted,
the berries being sorted according to their shape and size —
characteristics which seem in no way to affect the flavour.
The Ceylon exporters say that if we choose to pay twice as
much for shapely as for ill-shaped berries, it is no business of
theirs to refuse to humour us by sorting.

The most remarkable institution in Columbo is the steam
factory where the Government make or mend such machinery
as their experts certify cannot be dealt with at any private
works existing in the island. The Government elephants are
kept at the same place, but I found them at work up country
on the Kandy road.

In passing through the native town upon Slave Island, we
saw some French Catholic priests in their working jungle
dresses of blue serge. They have met with singular successes
in Ceylon, having made 150,000 converts, while the English
and American missions have between them only 30,000 natives.
The Protestant missionaries in Ceylon complain much of the
planters, whom they accuse of declaring when they wish to
hire men, that " no Christian need apply ;" but it is a remark-
able fact that neither Protestants nor Catholics can make con-
verts among the self-supported " Moormen," the active pushing
inhabitants of the ports, who are Mohamedans to a man. The
chief cause of the success of the Catholics among the Cinghalese,
seems to be the earnestness of the French and Italian mis-
pionarv priests. Our English missionaries in the East are loo

2 D 2

404 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. &

often men incapable of bearing fatigue or climate ; ignorant of
every trade, and inferior even in teaching and preaching powers
to their rivals. It is no easy matter to spread Christianity
among the Cinghalese, the inventors of Buddhism, the most
ancient and most widely spread of all the religions of the world.
Every Buddhist firmly believes in the potential perfection of
man, and is incapable of understanding the ideas of original
sin and redemption ; and a Cinghalese Buddhist — passionless
himself — cannot comprehend the passionate worship that Chris-
tianity requires. The Catholics, however, do not neglect the
Eastern field for missionary labour. Four of their bishops
from Cochin China and Japan were met by me in Galle, upon
their way to Rome.

Our drive was brought to an end by a visit to the old Dutch
quarter — a careful imitation of Amsterdam ; indeed, one of its
roads still bears the portentous Batavian name of Dam Street.
Their straight canals, and formal lines of trees, the Hollanders
have carried with them throughout the world ; but in Columbo,
not content with manufacturing imitation canals, that began
and ended in a wall, they dug great artificial lakes to recall
their well-loved Hague.

The same evening, I set off by the new railway for Kandy
and Nmvara Ellia (pronounced Nooralia) in the hills. Having
no experience of the climate of mountain regions in the tropics,
I expected a merely pleasant change, and left Columbo wear-
ing my white kit, which served me well enough as far as Ambe
Pusse — the railway terminus, which we reached at ten o'clock
at night. We started at once by coach, and had not driven
far up the hills in the still moonlight before the cold became
extreme, and I was saved from a severe chill only by the kind-
ness of the coffee-planter who shared the back seat with me,
and who, being well clad in woollen, lent me his great-coat
After this incident, we chatted pleasantly without fear of inter-
ruption from our sole companion — a native girl, who sat silently
chewing betel all the way — and reached Kandy before dawn.
Telling the hotel servants to wake me in an hour, I wrapped
myself in a blanket — the first I had seen since I left Australia
—and enjoyed a refreshing sleep.

40$

CHAPTER II.

KANDY.

THE early morning was foggy and cold as an October dawn in
an English forest ; but before I had been long in the gardens
of the Government House, the sun rose, and the heat returned
once more. After wandering among the petunias and fan-
palms of the gardens, I passed on into the city, the former
capital of the Kandian or highland kingdom, and one of the
holiest of Buddhist towns. The kingdom was never conquered
by the Portuguese or Dutch while they held the coasts, and
was not overrun by us till 1815, while it has several times been
in rebellion since that date. The people still retain their
native customs in a high degree : for instance, the Kandian
husband does not take his wife's inheritance unless he lives
with her on her father's land : if she lives with him, she for-
feits her inheritance. Kandian law, indeed, is expressly main-
tained by us except in the matters of polygamy and polyandry,
although the maritime Cinghalese are governed, as are the
English in Ceylon and at the Cape, by the civil code ot
Holland.

The difference between the Kandian and coast Cinghalese is
very great. At Kandy, I found the men wearing flowing
crimson robes and flat-topped caps, while their faces were lighter
in colour than those of the coast people, and many of them had
beards. The women also wore the nose-ring in a different
way, and were clothed above as well as below the waist. It is
possible that some day we may unfortunately hear more of this
energetic and warlike people.

The city is one that dwells long in the mind. The Upper
Town is one great garden, so numerous are the sacred groves,

to6 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAV. tt

vocal with the song of the Eastern orioles, but here and there
are dotted about pagoda-shaped temples, identical in form with
those of Tartary two thousand miles away, and from these there
proceeds a roar of tom-toms that almost drowns the song. One
of these temples contains the holiest of Buddhist relics, the
tooth of Buddha, which is yearly carried in a grand procession.
When we first annexed the Kandian kingdom, we established
the Buddhist Church, made our officers take part in the pro-
cession of the Sacred Tooth, and sent a State offering to
the shrine. Times are changed since then, but the Buddhist
priests are still exempt from certain taxes. All round the
sacred enclosures are ornamented walls, with holy sculptured
figures ; and in the Lower Town are fresh-water lakes and
tanks, formed by damming the Mavaliganga River, and, also,
in some measure, holy. An atmosphere of Buddhism pervades
all Kandy.

From Kandy, I visited the coffee-district of which it is the
capital and centre, but was much disappointed with regard to
the amount of land that is still open to coffee cultivation. At
the Government Botanic Garden at Peredenia (where the jalap
plant, the castor-oil plant, and the ipecacuanha were growing
side by side), I was told that the shrub does not flourish under
1500, nor over 3000 or 4000 feet above sea-level, and that
all the best coffee-land is already planted. Coffee-growing has
done so much for Ceylon that it is to be hoped it has not
reached its limit : in thirty-three years, it has doubled her trade
ten times, and to England alone she now sends two millions
worth of coffee every year. The central district of the island,
in which lie the hills and coffee-country, is, with the exception
of the towns, politically not a portion of Ceylon : there are
English capital, English management, and Indian labour, and
the cocoa-palm is unknown ; Tamil labourers are exclusively
employed upon the plantations, although the carrying trade,
involving but little labour, is in the hands of the Cinghalese.
No such official discouragement is shown to the European
planters in Ceylon as that which they experience in India ; and
were there but more good coffee-lands and more capital, all
would be well. The planters say that, after two years' heavy
expenditure and dead loss, 20 per cent, can be made by men

CHAP, n.] KAND T. 407

who take in sufficient capital, but that no one ever does take
capital enough for the land he buys, and that they all have to
borrow from one of the Columbo companies at 12 per cent.,
and are then bound to ship their coffee through that company
alone. It is regarded as an open question by many disin-
terested friends of Ceylon whether it might not be wise for the
local Government to advance money to the planters : but
besides the fear of jobbery, there is the objection to this course,
that the Government, becoming interested in the success of
coffee-planting, might also come to connive at the oppression
of the native labourers. This oppression of the people lies at
the bottom of that Dutch system which is often held up for our
imitation in Ceylon.

Those who narrate to us the effects of the Java system forget
that it is not denied that in the tropical islands, with an idle popu-
lation and a rich soil, compulsory labour may be the only way
of developing the resources of the countries, but they fail to
show the justification for our developing the resources of the
country by such means. The Dutch culture-system puts a
planter down upon the crown lands, and, having made advances
to him, leaves it to him to find out how he shall repay the
Government. Forced labour — under whatever name — is the
natural result.

The Dutch, moreover, bribe the great native chiefs by
princely salaries and vast percentage upon the crops their
people raise, and force the native agriculturists to grow spices
for the Royal Market of Amsterdam. Of the purchase of these
spices the Government has a monopoly : it buys them at what
price it will, and selling again in Europe to the world, clears
annually some ^£4,000,000 sterling by the job.* That plunder,
slavery, and famine often follow the extension of their system
is nothing to the Dutch. Strict press laws prevent the Dutch
at home from hearing anything of the discontent in Java, ex-
cept when famine or insurrection call attention to the isle ; and
^£4,000,000 a year profit, and half the expenses of their navy
paid for them by one island in the Eastern seas, make up for
many deaths of brown-faced people by starvation.

* Since this was written there has been an outcry in Holland, followed
by an improvement in the Government of Java.

4oJ GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. I.

« The Dutch often deny that the Government retains the
monopoly of export ; but the fact of the matter is that the
Dutch Trading Company, who have the monopoly of the
exports of the produce of Crown lands — which amount to two-
thirds of the total exports of the isle — are mere agents of the
Government.*

It is hard to say that apart from the nature of the culture-
system, the Dutch principle of making a profit out of the
countries which they rule is inconsistent with the position of a
Christian nati&n. It is the ancient system of countries having
possessions in the East, and upon our side we are not able to
show any definite reasons in favour of our course of scrupu-
lously keeping separate the Indian revenue, and spending
Indian profits upon India and Cinghalese in Ceylon, except
such reasons as would logically lead to our quitting India
altogether. That the Dutch should make a profit out of Java
is perhaps not more immoral than that they should be there.
At the same time, the character of the Dutch system lowers the
tone of the whole Dutch nation, and especially of those who
have any connexion with the Indies, and effectually prevents
future amendment. With our system, there is some chance ot
right being done, so small is our self-interest in the wrong.
From the fact that no surplus is sent home from Ceylon, she is
at least free from that bane of Java, — the desire of the local
authorities to increase as much as possible the valuable pro-
ductions of their districts, even at the risk of famine, provided
only that they may hope to put oft" the famine until after their
time.

Not to be carried away by the material success of the Dutch
system, it is as well to bear in mind its secret history. A
private company — the Dutch Trading Society — was founded
at Amsterdam in 1824, the then King being the largest share-
holder. The company was in difficulties in 1830, when the
King, finding he was losing money fast, sent out as Governor-
General of the Dutch East Indies his personal friend Van den
Bosch. The next year, the culture-system, with all its attendant
horrors, was introduced into Java by Van den Bosch, the Dutch
* The Dutch Liberals have since their accession to power made many
changes in Java, but the old " culture system " with forced labour still
applies to sugar and coffee, and the taxes are still farmed.

CHAI-. li.l KANDY. 409

Trading Society being made agents for the Government. The
result was the extraordinary prosperity of the company, and the
leaving by the merchant-king of a private fortune of fabulous
amount.

The Dutch system has been defended by every conceivable
kind of blind misrepresentation ; it has even been declared,
by writers who ought certainly to know better, that the four
millions of surplus that Holland draws from Java, being profits
on trade, are not taxation ! Even the blindest admirers of the
system are forced, however, to admit that it involves the abso-
lute prohibition of missionary enterprise, and total exclusion
from knowledge of the Java people.*

The Ceylon planters have at present political as well as
financial difficulties on their hands. They have petitioned the
Queen for " self-government for Ceylon," and for control of the
revenue by " representatives of the public " — excellent princi-
ples, if " public " meant public, and " Ceylon," Ceylon ; but,
when we inquire of the planters what they really mean, we find
that by " Ceylon " they understand Galle and Columbo Fort,
and by " the public " they mean themselves. There are at
present six unofficial members of the Council : of these, the
whites have three members, the Dutch burghers one, and the
natives two ; and the planters expect the same proportions to
be kept in a Council to which supreme power shall be entrusted
in the disposition of the revenues. They are, indeed, careful
to explain that they in 'no way desire the extension of repre-
sentative institutions to Ceylon.

The first thing that strikes the English traveller in Ceylon is
the apparent slightness of our hold upon the country. In my
journey from Galle to Columbo, by early morning and mid-day,
I met no white man ; from Columbo to Kandy, I travelled
with one, but met none ; at Kandy, I saw no whites ; at
Nuwara Ellia, not half-a-dozen. On my return, I saw no whites
between Nuwara Ellia and Ambe Pusse, where there was a
white man in the railway-station ; and on my return by evening
from Columbo to Galle, in all the thronging crowds along the
roads there was not a single European. There are hundreds

* In 1875 I visited Java, and was most hospitably received by the
Dutch officials, but I find nothing to change in this chapter.

4to GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. n.

of Cinghalese in the interior who live and die, and never see a
white man. Out of the two and a quarter millions of people
who dwell in what the planters call the " colony of Ceylon,"
there are but 1300 persons, or about 500 grown-up men. The
proposition of the Planters' Association is that we should con-
fide the despotic government over two and a quarter millions
of Buddhist, Mohamedaa, and Hindoo labourers to these
500 English Christian employers. It is not the Ceylon
planters who have a .grievance against us, but we who have a
serious complaint against them ; so flourishing a dependency
should certainly provide for all the costs of her defence.*

Some of the mountain views between Kandy and Nuwara
Ellia are full of grandeur, though they lack the New Zealand
snows f but none can match, for variety and colour, that which I
saw on my return from the descent at the Kaduganava Pass, I"
where you look over a foreground of giant-leaved talipot and
slender areca palms and tall bamboos, lit with the scarlet
blooms of the cotton-tree, on to a plain dotted with banyan-
tree groves and broken by wooded hills. On either side, the
deep valley-bottoms are carpeted with bright green — the wet
rice-lands, or terraced paddy-fields, from which the natives
gather crop after crop throughout the year.

In the union of rich foliage with deep colour and grand
forms, no scenery save that of New Zealand can bear compari-
son with that of the hill country of Ceylon, unless, indeed, it be
the scenery of Java, and the far Eastern isles.

* She nominally pays a little more than " the cost of the troops," but
this is not the real cost as charged to India, but merely the pay and ex-
penses in Ceylon.

f The railway has since been made through this pass.

CHAPTER III.
MADRAS TO CALCUTTA.

SPENDING but a single day in Madras — an inferior Columbo —
I passed on to Calcutta with a pleasant remembrance of the
air of prosperity that hangs about the chief city of what is still
called by Bengal civilians "The Benighted Presidency." Small
as are the houses, poor as are the shops, every one looks well-
to-do, and everybody happy, from the not undeservedly famed
cooks at the club to the catamaran men on the shore. Coffee
and good government have of late done much for Madras.

The surf consists of two lines of rollers, and is altogether
inferior to the fine-weather swell on the west coast of New
Zealand, and only to be dignified and promoted into surfship
by men of that fine imagination which will lead them to sniff
the spices a day before they reach Ceylon, or the pork and
molasses when off Nantucket light-ship. The row through the
first roller in the lumbering Massullah boat, manned by a dozen
sinewy blacks, the waiting for a chance between the first and
second lines of spray, and then the dash for shore, the crew
singing their measured " Ah ! lah 1 Idlala ! — ah 1 lah ! lalala !"
the stroke coming with the accented syllable, and the helms-
man shrieking with excitement, is a more pretentious ceremony
than that which accompanies the crossing of Hokitika bar, but
the passage is a far less dangerous one. The Massullah boats
are like empty hay-barges on the Thames, but built without
nails, so that they " give " instead of breaking up when battered
by the sand on one side and the seas upon the other. This is
a very wise precaution in the case of boats which are always
made to take the shore broadside on. The first sea that
strikes the boat either shoots the passenger on to the dry sand,
or puts him where he can easily be caught by the natives on

4I3 GREATER BnfTAW. [CIIAK m.

the beach, but tke Massullah boat herself gets a terrible bang-
ing before the crew can haul her out of reach of the seas.

Sighting the Temple of Juggernauth and one palm-tree, but
seeing no land, we entered the Hoogly, steaming between light-
houses, guard-ships, and buoys, but not catching a glimpse of
the low land of the Sunderbunds till we had been many hours
in " the river." After lying all night off the tiger-infested
island of Saugur, we started on our run up to Calcutta before
the sun was risen. Compared with Ceylon, the scene was
English ; there was nothing tropical about it except the mist
upon the land ; and low villas and distant factory chimneys
reminded one of the Thames between Battersea and Fulham.
Coming into Garden Reach, where large ships anchor before
they sail, we had a long, low building on our right, gaudy and
architecturally hideous, but from its vast size almost imposing :
it was the palace of the dethroned King of Oude, the place
where, it is said, are carried on deeds become impossible in
Lucknow. Such has been the extravagance of the King that
the Government of India has lately interfered, and appointed a
commission to pay his debts, and deduct them from his income
of ;£i 20,000 a year; for we pay into the privy purse of the
dethroned Vizier of Oude exactly twice the yearly sum that we
set aside for that of Queen Victoria. Whatever income is
allowed to native princes, they always spend the double. The
experience of the Dutch in Java arid our own in India is
uniform in this respect. Removed from that slight restraint
upon expenditure which the fear of bankruptcy or revolution
forces upon reigning kings, native princes supported by
European Governments run recklessly into debt. The com-
mission which was sitting upon the debts of the King of Oude
while I was in Calcutta warned him that, if he offended a
second time, Government would for the future spend his income
for him. It is not the King's extravagance alone, however,
that is complained of. Always notorious for debauchery, he
has now become infamous for his vices. One of his wives
was arrested while I was in Calcutta for purchasing girls for
the harem, but the King himself escaped. For nine years he
has never left his palace, yet he spends, we aie told, from
^£200,000 to ^250,000 a year.

CHAI-. m.] MADRAS TO CALCUTTA. 413

In his extravagance and immorality the King of Oude does
not stand alone in Calcutta. His mode of life is imitated
by the wealthy natives ; his vices are mimicked by the young
Bengalee baboo. It is a question whether we are not respon-
sible for the tone which has been taken by " civilization " iu
Calcutta. The old philosophy has gone, and left nothing in its
place ; we have by moral force destroyed the old religions in
Calcutta, but we have set up no new. Whether the character
of our Indian Government, at once levelling and paternal, has
not much to do with the spread of careless sensuality is a ques-
tion before answering which it would be well to look to France,
where a similar government has for sixteen years prevailed.
In Paris, at least, democratic despotism is fast degrading the
French citizen to the moral level of the Bengalee baboo.

The first thing in Calcutta that I saw was the view of the
Government House from the Park Reserve — a miniature
Sahara since its trees were destroyed by the great cyclone.
The Viceroy's dwelling, though crushed by groups of lions and
unicorns of gigantic stature and astonishing design, is an im-
posing building ; but it is the only palace in the " city of
palaces " — a name which must have been given to the pestife-
rous city by some one who had never seen any other towns but
Liverpool and London. The true city of palaces is Lucknow.

In Calcutta, I first became acquainted with that unbounded
hospitality of the great mercantile houses in the East of which
I have since acquired many pleasing remembrances. The
luxury of " the firm " impresses the English traveller ; the huge
house is kept as an hotel ; every one is welcome to dinner,
breakfast, and bed in the verandah, or in a room, if he can
sleep under a roof in the hot weather. Sometimes two and
sometimes twenty sit down to the meals, and always without
notice to the butlers or the cooks, but every one is welcome,
down to the friend of a friend's friend ; and junior clerks will
write letters of introduction to members of the firm, which
secure the bearer a most hospitable welcome from the other
clerks, even when all the partners are away. " If Brown is not
there, Smith will be, and if he's away, why then Johnson will
put you up," is the form of invitation to the hospitalities of an
Eastern firm. The finest of fruits are un table between five

4t4 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. in.

and six, and tea and iced drinks are ready at all times, from
dawn to breakfast — a ceremony which takes place at ten. To
the regular meals you come in or not as you please, and no
one trained in Calcutta or Bombay can conceive offence being
taken by a host at his guest accepting, without consulting him,
Invitations to dine out in the city, or to spend some days at a
villa in its outskirts. Servants are in the corridors by day and
night at the call of guests, and your entertainers tell you that,
although they have not time to go about with you, servants
will always be ready to drive you at sunset to the band-stand in
the carriage of some member of the firm.

The population of Calcutta is as motley as that of Galle,
though the constituents are not the same. Greeks, Armenians,
and Burmese, besides many Eurasians, or English-speaking
half-castes, mingle with the mass of Indian Mohamedans and
Hindoos. The hot weather having suddenly set in, the Cal-
cutta officials, happier than the merchants — who, however, care
little about heat when trade is good — were starting for Simla in
a body, " just as they were warming to their work," as the Cal-
cutta people say, and, finding that there was nothing to be done
in the stifling city, I, too, determined to set off.

The heat was great at night, and the noisy native crows and
whistling kites held durbars inside my window in the only cool
hour of the twenty-four — namely, that which begins at dawn —
and thus hastened my departure from Calcutta by preventing
me from taking rest while in it. Hearing that at Patna there
was nothing to be seen or learnt, I travelled from Calcutta to
Benares — 500 miles — in the same train and railway carriage.
Our first long stoppage was at Chandernagore, but, as the native
baggage-coolies, or porters, howl the station names in their own
fashion, I hardly recognised the city in the melancholy moan of
" Orn-dorn-orn-gorne," which welcomed the train, and it was
not till I saw a French infantry uniform upon the platform that
I remembered that Chandernagore, a village belonging to the
French, lies hard by Calcutta, to which city it was once a dan-
gerous rival. It is said that the French retain their Indian
dependencies instead of selling them to us as did the Dutch, in
order that they may ever bear in mind the fact that we once
conquered them in India; but it would be hard to find any real

CHAP. m.J MADRAS TO CALCUTTA. 415

ground for their retention, unless they are held as centres for
the Catholic missions. We will not even permit them to be
made smuggling depots, for which purpose they would be ex-
cellently adapted. The whole of the possessions in India of the
French amount together to only twenty-six leagues square.
Even Pondicherry, the only French-Indian dependency of which
the name is often heard in Europe, is cut into several portions
by strips of British territory, and the whole of the French-
Indian dependencies aie mere specks of land isolated in our
vast territories. The officer who was lounging in the station
was a native ; indeed, in the territory of Chandernagore there
are but 230 Europeans, and but 1500 in all French India. He
made up to my compartment as though he would have got in,
which I wished that he would have done, as natives in the
French service all speak French ; but, seeing a European, he
edged away to a dark uncomfortable compartment. This action
was, I fear, a piece of silent testimony to the prejudice which
makes our people in India almost invariably refuse to travel
with a native, whatever may be his rank.

As we passed through Burdwan and Rajmahal, where the
East Indian Railway taps the Ganges, the station scenes became
more and more interesting. We associate with the word " rail-
way " ideas that are peculiarly English : — shareholders and
directors, guards in blue, policemen in dark green, and porters
in brown corduroy; no English institution, however, assumes
more readily an Oriental dress. Station-masters and sparrows
alone are English ; everything else on a Bengal railway is purely
Eastern. Sikh irregulars jostle begging fakeers in the stations;
palkees and doolies — palankeens and litters, as we should call
them — wait at the back doors; ticket-clerks smoke water-pipes;
an ibis drinks at the engine-tank ; a sacred cow looks over the
fence, and a tame elephant reaches up with his trunk at the
telegraph wire, on which sits a hoopoe, while an Indian vultun
crowns the post. :

When we came opposite to the Monghyr Hills, the OJA
natural objects which for 1600 miles break the level of thegng
jilain of Hindostan, Sonthals and people ot the Central-Ini-
tribes, small-headed and savage-looking, were mingled with u
Hindoos at the stations. In blackness there was not nmv

41 6 ORE A TEE BR IT A 7.V. [CHAP. ni.

difference between the races, for low-caste Bengalees are as
black as Guinea negioes.

As the day grew hot, a water-carrier with a well-filled skin
Ujjon his back appeared at every station, and came running to
the native cars in answer to the universal long-drawn shout of
" Ah ! ah ! Bheestie— e !"

The first view of the Ganges calls up no enthusiasm. The
Thames below Gravesend half dried up would be not unlike it;
indeed, the river itself is as ugly as the Mississippi or Missouri,
while its banks are more hideous by far than theirs. Beyond
Patna, the plains, too, become as monotonous as the river —
flat, dusty, and treeless, they are no way tropical in their cha-
racter; they lie, indeed, wholly outside the tropics. I afterwards
found that a man may cross India from the Irawaddy to the
Indus, and see no tropical scenery, no tropical cultivation.
The aspect of the Ganges valley is that of Cambridgeshire, or
of parts of Lincoln seen after harvest time, and with flocks of
strange and brilliant birds and an occasional jackal thrown in.
The sun is hot — not, indeed, much hotter than in Australia, but
the heat is of a different kind to that encountered by the English
in Ceylon or the West Indies. From a military point of view,
the plains may be described as a parade-ground continued to
infinity; and this explains the success of our small forces against
the rebels in 1857, our cavalry and artillery having in all cases
swept their infantry from these levels with the utmost ease.

A view over the plains by daylight is one which in former
times some old Indians can never have enjoyed. Many a lady
in the days of palki-dawk has passed a life in the Deccan table-
land without ever seeing a mountain, or knowing she was on
the top of one. Carried up and down the ghauts at night, it
was only by by the tilting of her palki that she could detect the
rise or fall, for day travelling for ladies was almost unknown i»?
India before it was introduced with the railways.

At Patna, the station was filled with crowds of railway coolies,
- navvies, as we should say, who, with their tools and baggage,

:re camped out upon the platform, smoking peacefully. I

erwards found that natives have little idea of time-tables and

•parture hours. When they want to go ten miles by railway,
,hey walk straight down to the nearest stat.on, and there smoke

i.] XAD&AS TO CALCUTTA. 417

their hookahs till the train arrives — at the end of twenty-four
hours or ten minutes, as the case may be. There is but one
step that the more ignorant among the natives are in a hurry to
take, and that is to buy their tickets. They are no sooner come
to the terminus than with one accord they rush at the native
ticket-clerk, yelling the name of the station to which they wish
to go. In vain he declares that, the train not being due for
ten or fifteen hours, there is plenty of time for the purchase.
Open-mouthed, and wrought up almost to madness, the pas-
sengers dance round him, screaming " Burdwan !" or " Seram-
poor !" or whatever the name may be, till at last he surrenders
at discretion. There is often no room for all who wish to
go ; indeed, the worst point about the management of the
railways lies in the defective accommodation for the native
passengers, and their treatment by the English station-masters
is not always good : I saw them on many occasions terribly
kicked and cuffed ; but Indian station-masters are not very
highly paid, and are too often men who cannot resist the
temptations to violence which despotic power throws in their
way. They might ask with the Missourian in the United States
army when he was accused of drunkenness, " Whether Uncle
Sam expected to get all the cardinal virtues for fifteen dollars a
month ?"

The Indian railways are all made and worked by companies,
but as the Government guarantees the interest of five per cent,
which only the East Indian, or Calcutta and Delhi line can pay,
it interferes much in the management. The telegraph is both
made and worked by Government ; and the reason why the
railways were not put upon the same footing is that the Govern-
ment of India was doubtful as to the wisdom of borrowing
directly the vast sum required, and doubtful also of the possi-
bility of borrowing it without diminishing its credit.

The most marked among the effects of railways upon the
state of India are, as a moral change, the weakening of caste
ties — as a physical, the destruction of the Indian forests. If a
rich native discovers that he can, by losing caste in touching
his inferiors, travel a certain distance in a comfortable second-
class carriage for ten rupees, while a first-class ticket costs him
twenty, he will often risk his caste to save his pound ; still, caste

2 E

4i8 GHEATEK MtrAtX. [ciiAt>. ill,

yields but slowly to railways and the telegraph. It is but a very
few years since one of my friends received a thousand rupees
for pleading in a case which turned on the question whether the
paint-spot on Krishna's nose, which is also a caste sign, should
be drawn as a plain horizontal crescent, or with a pendant from
the centre. Only a year since, in Orissa, it was seen that
Hindoo peasants preferred cannibalism, or death by starvation,
to defilement by eating their bullocks.

As for the forests, their destruction has already in many places
changed a somewhat moist climate to one of excessive drought,
and planting is now taking place, with a view both to supplying
the railway engines, and bringing back the rains. On the East
Indian line, I found that they burnt mixed coal and wood, but
the Indian coal is scarce and bad, and lies entirely in shallow
" pockets."

Tiie train reached Mogul-Serai, the junction for Benares, at
midnight of the day following that on which it left Calcutta,
and, changing my carriage at once, I asked how long it would
be before we started, to which the answer was, " half an hour;"
so I went to sleep. Immediately, as it seemed, I was awakened
by whispering, and, turning, saw a crowd of boys and baggage-
coolies at the carriage-door. When I tried to discover what
they wanted, my Hindostanee broke down, and it was some
time before I found that I had slept through the short journey
from Mogul-Serai, and had dozed on in the station till the lights
had been put out, before the coolies woke me. Crossing the
Ganges by the bridge of boats, I found myself in Benares, the
ancient Varanasi, and sacred capital of the Hindoos,

CHAPTER IV.
BENARES.

IN the comparative cool of early morning, I sallied cut on a
stroll through the outskirts of Benares. Thousands of women
were stepping gracefully along the crowded roads, bearing on
their heads the water-jars, while at every few paces there was a
well, at which hundreds were waiting along with the bheesties
their turn for lowering their bright gleaming copper cups to the
well-water to fill their skins or vases. All were keeping up a
continual chatter, women with women, men with men : all the
tongues were running ceaselessly. It is astonishing to see the
indignation that a trifling mishap creates — such gesticulation,
such shouting, and loud talk, you would think that murder at
least was in question. The world cannot show the Hindoo's
equal as a babbler ; the women talk while they grind corn, the
men while they smoke their water-pipes ; your true Hindoo is
never quiet ; when not talking, he is playing on his tom-tom.

The Doorgha Khond, the famed Temple of the Sacred
Monkeys, I found thronged with worshippers, and garlanded in
every gart with roses : it overhangs one of the best holy tanks
in India, but has not much beauty or grandeur, and is chiefly
remarkable for the swarms of huge, fat-paunched, yellow-
bearded, holy monkeys, whose outposts hold one quarter of the
city, and whose main body forms a living roof to the temple.
A singular contrast to the Doorgha Khond was the Queen's
College for native students, built in a mixture of Tudor and
Hindoo architecture. The view from the roof is noticeable,
depending as it does for its beauty on the mingling of the rich
green of the timber with the gay colours of the painted native
huts. Over the trees are seen the minarets at the river-side,

2 E 2

410 GfiEATEti tiRfTATX. fa'Af. tr.

and an unwonted life was given to the view by the smoke and
flames that were rising from two burning huts, in widely-
separated districts of the native town. It is said that the
natives, whenever they quarrel with their neighbours, always
take the first opportunity of firing their huts ; but in truth the
huts in the hot weather almost fire themselves, so inflammable
are their roofs and sides.

When the sun had declined sufficiently to admit of another
excursion, I started from my bungalow, and, passing through
the elephant-stables, went down with a guide to the ghauts, the
observatory of Jai Singh, and the Golden Temple. From the
minarets of the mosque of Aurungzebe I had a lovely sunset view
of the ghauts, the city, and the Ganges ; but the real sight of
Benares, after all, lies in a walk through the tortuous passages
that do duty for streets. No carriages can pass them, they are
so narrow. You walk preceded by your guide, who warns the
people, that they may stand aside, and not be defiled by your
touch, for that is the real secret of the apparent respect paid to
you in Benares ; but the sacred cows are so numerous and so
obstinate that you cannot avoid sometimes jostling them. The
scene in the passages is the most Indian in India. The gaudy
dresses of the Hindoo princes spending a week in purification
at the holy place, the frescoed fronts of the shops and houses,
the deafening beating of the tomtoms, and, above all, the
smoke and sickening smell from the "burning ghauts," mingled
with a sweeter smell of burning spices, that meet you as you
work your way through the vast crowds of pilgrims who are
pouring up from the river's bank — all alike are strange to the
English traveller, and fill his mind with that indescribable awe
which everywhere accompanies the sight of scenes and cere-
monies that we do not understand. When once you are on
the Ganges bank itself, the scene is wilder still : — a river front
of some three miles, faced with lofty ghauts, or flights of stairs,
over which rise, pile above pile, in sublime confusion, lofty
palaces with oriel windows hanging over the sacred stream ;
observatories with giant sun-dials, gilt domes (golden, the story
runs), and silver minarets. On the ghauts, rows of fires, each
with a smouldering body ; on the river, boat-loads of pilgrims,
and fakeers praying while they float ; under the houses, lines Q\

CHAP, iv.] BENARES. ^7I

prostrate bodies — those of the sick — brought to the sacred
Ganges to die — or, say our Government spies, to be raurdeied
by suffocation with sacred mud ; while prowling about are the
wolf-like fanatics who feed on putrid flesh. The whole is lit by
a sickly sun fitfully glaring through the smoke, while the Ganges
stream is half obscured by the river fog and reek of the hot
earth.

The lofty pavilions that crown the river front are ornamented
with paintings of every beast that walks and bird that flies ; with
monsters, too — pink and green and spotted — with griffins,
dragons, and elephant-headed gods embracing dancing-girls.
Here and there are representations of red-coated soldiers —
English, it would seem, for they have white faces, but so, the
Maories say, have the New Zealand fairies, who are certainly
not British. The Benares taste for painting leads to the
decoration with pink and yellow spots of the very cows. The
tiger is the commonest of all the figures on the walls — indeed,
the explanation that the representations are allegorical, or that
gods are pictured in tiger shape, has not removed from my
mind the belief that the tiger must have been worshipped in
India at some early date. All Easterns are inclined to worship
the beasts that eat them : the Javanese light floating sacrifices
to their river crocodiles ; the Scindees at Kurrachee venerate
the sacred muggur, or man-eating alligator ; the hill-tribes pray
to snakes ; indeed, to a new comer, all Indian religion has the
air of devil-worship, or worship of the destructive principle in
some shape : the gods are drawn as grinning fiends, they are
propitiated by infernal music, they are often worshipped with
obscene and hideous rites. There is even something cruel in
the monotonous roar of the great tomtoms ; the sound seems to
connect itself with widow-burning, with child-murder, with Jug-
gernauth processions. Since the earliest known times, the
tomtom has been used to drown the cries of tortured fanatics ;
its booming is bound up with the thousand barbarisms of false
religion. If the scene on the Benares ghauts is full of horrors,
we must not forget that Hindooism is a creed of fear and horror,
not of love.

The Government of India has lately instituted an inquiry into
the alleged abuses of the custom of taking sick Hindoos to

432 GREATER BRITAIN [OHAP. iv.

the Ganges-side to die, with a view to regulating or suppressing
the practice which prevails in the river-side portion of Lower
Bengal. At Benares, Bengal people are still taken to the
river-side, but not so other natives, as Hindoos dying anywhere
in the sacred city have all the blessings which the most holy
death can possibly secure ; the Benares Shastra, moreover,
forbids the practice, and I saw but two cases of it in the city,
although I had seen many near Calcutta. Not only are aged
people brought from their sick-rooms, laid in the burning
sun, and half suffocated with the Ganges water poured down
their throats, but, owing to the ridicule which follows if they
recover, or the selfishness of their relatives, the water is often
muddier than it need be : hence the phrase " ghaut murder," by
which this custom is generally known. Similar customs are not
unheard of in other parts of India, and even in Polynesia and North
America. The Veddahs, or black Aborigines of Ceylon, were,
up to very lately, in the habit of carrying their dying parents or
children into the jungle ; and, having placed a chatty of Avater
and some rice by their side, leaving them to be devoured by
wild beasts. Under pressure from our officials, they are
believed to have ceased to act thus, but they continue, we are
told, to throw their dead to the leopards and crocodiles. The
Maories, too, have a way of taking out to die alone those whom
their seers have pronounced doomed men, but it is probable
that, among the rude races, the custom which seems to be a
relic of human sacrifice has not been so grossly abused as it has
been by the Bengal Hindoos. The practice of Ganjatra is but
one out of many similar barbarities that disgrace the religion of
the Hindoos, but it is fast sharing the fate of suttee and
infanticide.

As I returned through the bazaar, I met many most unholy-
looking visitors to the sacred town. Fierce Sikhs, with
enormous turbans ornamented with zig-zag stripes; bankers,
in large purple turbans, curling their long white moustaches,
and bearing their critical noses high aloft as they daintily
picked their way over the garbage of the streets ; and savage
retainers of the rajahs staying for a season at their city
palaces, were to the traveller's eye no very devout pilgrims. In
truth, the immoralities of the " holy city " are as great as its

CHAP, iv.] BEX ARES, 4j 3

religious virtues, and it is the chosen ground of the loose
characters as well as of the pilgrims of the Hindoo world.

In the whole of the great throng in the bazaar, hardly the
slightest trace of European dressing was to be perceived : the
varnished boots of the wealthier Hindoos alone bore witness to
the existence of English trade — a singular piece of testimony,
this, to the essential conservatism of the Oriental mind. With
any quantity of old army clothing to be got for the asking, you
never see a rag of it on a native back — not even on that of the
poorest coolie. If you give a blanket to an outdoor servant, he
will cut it into strips, and wear them as a puggree round his
head ; but this is about the only thing he will accept, unless to
sell it in the bazaar.

As I stopped to look for a moment at the long trains of laden
camels that were winding slowly through the tortuous streets, I
saw a European soldier cheapening a bracelet with a native
jeweller. He was the first topee-wallah (" hat-fellow," or " Euro-
pean ") that I had seen in Benares city. Calcutta is the only
town in Northern India in which you meet Europeans in your
walks or rides ; and, even there, there is but one European to
ever)' sixty natives. In all India, there are, including troops,
children, and officials, far less than as many thousands of
Europeans as there are millions of natives.

The evening after that on which I visited the native town, I
saw in Secrole cantonments, near Benares, the India hated and
dreaded by our troops — by day a blazing deadly heat and sun,
at night a still more deadly fog — a hot white fog, into which the
sun disappears half an hour before his time for setting, and out
of which he shoots soon after seven in the morning, to blaze
and kill again — a pestiferous fever-breeding ground-fog, out of
which stand the tops of the palms, though their stems are
invisible in the steam. Compared with our English summer
climate, it seems the atmosphere of another planet.

Among the men in the cantonments, I found much of that
demoralization that heat everywhere produces among English-
men. The newly-arrived soldiers appear to pass their days in
alternate trials of hard drinking and of total abstinence, and are
continually in a state of nervous fright, which in time must
wear them out, and make them an easy rrey to fever The

424 GREATER BJUTALV. [CHAP, iv

officers who are fresh from England often behave in much the
same manner as the men, though with them " belatee pawnee "
takes the place of plain water with the brandy. "Belatee pawnee"
means, being translated, " English water," but, when interpreted,
it means " soda-water " — the natives once believing that this
was English river-water, bottled and brought to India by us as
they carry Ganges water to the remotest parts. The super-
stition is now at an end, owing to the fact that natives are
themselves largely employed in the making of soda-water, which
is cheaper in India than it is at home ; but the name remains.

Our men kill themselves with beer, with brandy-and-soda-
water, and with careless inattention to night chills, and then
blame the poor climate for their fevers, or die cursing " India."
Of course, long residence in a climate winterless and always
hot at mid-day produces or intensifies certain diseases ; but
brandy-and-soda-water produces more, and intensifies all. They
say it is " soda-and-brandy " the first month, and then " brandy-
and-soda," but that men finally take to putting in the soda-water
first, and then somehow the brandy always kills them. If a
man wears a flannel belt and thick clothes when he travels by
night, and drinks hot tea, he need not fear India.*

In all ways, Benares is the type of India: in the Secrole
cantonments, you have the English in India, intelligent enough,
but careless, and more English than they are at home, with
garrison chaplains, picnics, balls, and champagne suppers ; hard
by, in the native town, the fierce side of Hindooism, and streets
for an Englishman to show himself in which ten years ago was
almost certain death. Benares is the centre of all the political
intrigues of India, but the great mutiny itself was hatched there
without being heard of at Secrole. Except that our policemen
now perambulate the town, change in Benares there has been
none. Were missionaries to appear openly in its streets, their
fate would still very possibly be the same as that which in this
city befell St Thomas.

* The Dutch Commander-in-Chief at the time of my visit to Java had
been 30 years in Dutch India, and some of their civil officials have been
there 45 years without returning, and are in perfect health ; but the Dutch,
Tery wisely, live, the Ufe of natives,

41$

CHAPTER V.
CASTE.

ONE of the greatest difficulties with which the British have to
contend in Hindostan is how to discover the tendencies, how
to follow the changes, of native opinion. Your Hindoo is so
complaisant a companion, that, whether he is your servant at
threepence a day, or the ruler of the State in which you dwell,
he is perpetually striving to make his opinions the reflex of
your own. You are engaged in a continual struggle to prevent
your views from being seen, in order that you may get at his :
in this you always fail ; a slight hint is enough for a Hindoo,
and, if he cannot find even that much of suggestion in your
words, he confines himself to commonplace. We should see in
this, not so much one of the forms assumed by the cringing
slavishness born of centuries of subjection — not so much an
example of Oriental cunning, as of the polish of Eastern man-
ners. Even in our rude country, it is hardly courteous, what-
ever your opinions, flatly to contradict the man with whom you
happen to be talking ; with the Hindoo, it is the height of ill-
breeding so much as to differ from him. The results of the
practice are deplorable ; our utter ignorance of the secret his-
tory of the rebellion of 1857 is an example of its working, for
there must have been a time, before discontent ripened into
conspiracy, when we might have been advised and warned.
The native newspapers are worse than useless to us ; accepted
as exponents of Hindoo views by those who know no better,
and founded mostly by British capital, they are at once inca-
pable of directing and of acting as indexes to native opinion,
and express only the sentiments of half-a-dozen small mer-
chants at the presidency towns., who give the tone to some

4J6 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. v.

two or three papers, which are copied and followed by the
remainder.

The result of this difficulty in discovering native opinion is
that our officers, however careful, however considerate in their
bearing towards the natives, daily wound the feelings of the
people who are under their care by acts which, though done in
a praiseworthy spirit, appear to the natives deeds of gross
stupidity or of outrageous despotism. It is hopeless to attempt
to conciliate, it is impossible so much as to govern unless by
main force continually displayed, an Eastern people in whose
religious thought we are not deeply learned.

Not only are we unacquainted with the feelings of the people,
but we are lamentably ignorant of the simplest facts about their
religions, their wealth, and their occupations ; for no census of
all India has yet been taken. A complete census had, indeed,
been taken, not long before my visit, in Central India, and
another in the North-West Provinces, but none in Madras,
Bombay, the Punjaub, or Bengal. The difficulties in the way
of the officials who carried through the arrangements for the
two that had been taken were singularly great. In the Central
Provinces, the census-papers had to be prepared in five lan-
guages ; both here and in the North-West, the purely scientific
nature of the inquiry had to be brought home to the minds of
the people. In Central India, the hill tribes believed that our
object in the census was to pave the way for the collection of
the unmarried girls as companions for our wifeless soldiers, so
a-11 began marrying forthwith. In the North-West, the natives
took it into their heads that our object was to see how many
able bodied men would be available for a war against Russia,
and to collect a poll-tax to pay for the expedition. The
numerous tribes that are habitually guilty of infanticide threw
every difficulty in the way; Europeans disliked the whole affair,
on account of the insult offered to their dignity in ranking them
along with natives. It must be admitted, indeed, that the pro-
visions for recording caste distinctions gave an odd shape to
the census-papers left at the houses at Secrole, in which Euro-
pean officers were asked to state their " caste or tribe." The
census of the Central Provinces was imperfect enough, but
that of the North-West was the second that had been takeu

CJUP. v.] CASTE. 427

there, and showed signs of scientific arrangement and gieat
care.

The North-West Provinces include the great towns of Benares,
Agra, and Allahabad, and the census fell into my hands at
Benares itself, at the Sanscrit College. It was a strange pro-
duction, and seemed to have brought together a mass of infor-
mation respecting castes and creeds which was new even to
those who had lived long in the North-West Provinces. All
callings in India being hereditary, there were entries recording
the presence in certain towns of " hereditary clerks who pray
to their inkhorns," " hereditary promoters of marriages," " here-
ditary beggars," " hereditary planters of slips or cuttings,"
"hereditary gravediggers," "hereditary hermits," and "hereditary
hangmen," for in India a hangmanship descends with as much
regularity as a crown. In the single district of the Dehra
Valley, there are 1500 "hereditary tomtom men" — -drummers
at the festivals ; 234 Brahmins of Bijnour returned themselves
as having for profession " the receipt of presents to avert the
influence of evil stars." In Bijnour, there are also fifteen people
of a caste which professes " the pleasing of people by assuming
disguises," while at Benares there is a whole caste — the Bhats
— whose hereditary occupation is to " satirise the enemies of
the rich, and to praise their friends," and another caste whose
members receive alms only at the times of eclipses of the moon.
In the North-West Provinces there are 572 distinct castes
in all.

The accounts which some castes give of their origin read
strangely in a solemn governmental document : the members of
one caste described themselves as " descended from Maicasur, a
demon ;" but some of the records are less legendary and more
Historic. Ona caste in the Dehra Valley sent in a note that
they came in 1000 A.D. from the Deccan ; another that they
emigrated from Arabia 500 years ago. The Gour Brahmins
claim to have been in the district of Moozuffernuggur foi
5000 years.

Under the title of " occupations," the heads of families alone
were given, and not the number of those dependent on them,
whence it comes that in the whole province only " i i,oco tom-
tom players " were set down, The habits and tastes of the

428 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. V,

people are easily seen in the entries: " 3600 firework manufac-
turers,'' "45 makers of crowns for idols," "4353 gold-bangle
makers," "29,136 glass-bangle makers," "1123 astrologers."
There are also 145 " ear-cleaners," besides " kite-makers," " ear-
piercers," "pedigree-makers," "makers of caste-marks," "cow-
dung sellers,'' and " hereditary painters of horses with spots."
There was no backwardness in the followers of maligned pur-
suits: 974 people in Allahabad described themselves as "low
blackguards," 35 as " men who beg with threats of violence,"
25 as "hereditary robbers," 479,015 as "beggars," 29 as
"howlers at funerals," 226 as "flatterers for gain ;" "vagabonds,"
charmers," "informers "were all set down, and noo returned
themselves as " hereditary buffoons," while 2000 styled them-
selves "conjurors," 4000 "acrobats," and 6372 "poets." In
one district alone there were 777 "soothsayers and astrologers"
by profession.

It is worthy of notice that, although there are in the North-
West Provinces half a million of beggars in a population of
thirty millions, they seem never to beg of Europeans — at least,
I was not once asked for alms during my stay in India. If the
smallest service be performed, there comes a howl of " O Bauks-
heece !" from all quarters, but at other times natives seem afraid
to beg of Englishmen.

The number of fakeers, soothsayers, charmers, and other
" religious" vagabonds is enormous, but the dense ignorance of
the people renders them a prey to witchcraft, evil-eye, devil-
influence, and all such folly. In Central India, there are whole
districts which are looked upon as witch-tracts or haunted places,
and which are never approached by man, but set aside as homes
for devils. A gentleman who was lately engaged there on the
railroad survey, found that night after night his men were
frightened out of their wits by " fire-fiends," or blazing demons.
He insisted that they should take him to the spot where these
strange sights were seen, and to his amazement he, too, saw the
fire-devil; at least, he saw a blaze of light moving slowly
through the jungle. Gathering himself up for a chase, he
rushed at the devil with a club, when the light suddenly disap-
peared, and instantly shone out from another spot, a hundred
yards from the former place. Seeing that there was some

trickery at work, he hid himself, and after some hours caught
his devil, who, to escape from a sound drubbing, gave an expla-
nation of the whole affair. The man said that the natives of
the surveyor's party had stolen his mangoes for several nights,
but that at last he had hit on a plan for frightening them away.
He and his sons went out at dark with pots of blazing oil upon
their heads, and, when approached by thieves, the leading one
put a cover on his pot, and became invisible, while the second
uncovered his. The surveying party got the drubbing, and the
devil escaped scot-free; but the surveyor, with short-sighted
wisdom, told his men, who had not seen him catch the fire-
bearer, that he had had the honour of an interview with the
devil himself, who had joyfully informed him of the thefts com-
mitted by the men. The surveyor did not admit that he was
from this time forward worshipped by his party, but it is not
unlikely that such was the case. One of the hill-tribes of Madras
worships Colonel Palmer, a British officer who died some seventy
years ago, just as Drake was worshipped in America, and
Captain Cook in Hawaii ; and Colonel Wallace is said to be
worshipped in some village in the Deccan. It was one of these
tribes that invented the well-known worshipping machine, or
"praying-wheel."

The hill-tribes are less refined, but hardly more ignorant in their
fanaticism than are the Hindoos. At Bombay, upon the beach
where the dead are buried, or rather tossed to the wild beasts,
I saw a filthy and holy Hindoo saint, whose claim to veneration
consists in his having spent the whole of the days and portions
of the nights for twenty years in a stone box in which he can
neither stand, nor lie, nor sit, nor sleep. These saintly fakeers
have still much influence with the Hindoo mass, but in old
times their power and their insolence were alike unbounded.
Agra itself was founded to please one of them. The great
Emperor Akbar, who, although a lax Mohamedan, was in no
sense a Hindoo, kept nevertheless a Hindoo saint for political
purposes, and gave him the foremost position in his train. When
the Emperor was beginning to fortify Futtehpore Sikri, where
he lived, the saint sent for him, and said that the work must be
stopped, as the noise disturbed him at his prayers. The Emperor
offered him new rooms away from the site of the proposed

436 G&EATER MiTArit. [CHAP. v.

walls, but the saint replied that, whether Akbar went on with
his works or no, he should leave Futtehpore. To pacify him,
Akbar founded Agra, and dismantled Futtehpore Sikri.

From the census it appears that there are in the North-West
Provinces no less than twenty-two newspapers under Govern-
ment inspection, of which five are published at Agra, The
circulation of these papers is extremely small, and as the
Government itself takes 3500 of the 12,000 copies which they
issue, its hold over them, without exertion of force, is great.
Of the other 8500, 8000 go to native and 500 to European
subscribers. All the native papers are skilful at catering for
their double public, but those which are printed half in a native
tongue and half in English stand in the first rank for unscrupu-
lousness. One of these papers gave, while I was in India, some
French speech in abuse of the English. This was headed on
the English side "Interesting Account of the English," but on
the native side," Excellent Account of the English." The " English
correspondence," and English news of these native papers is so
absurdly concocted by the editors out of their own brains, that
it is a question whether fc would not be advisable to send them
weekly a column of European news, and even to withhold
Government patronage from them unless they gave it room,
leaving them to qualify and explain the facts as best they could.*
Their favourite statements are that Russia is going to invade
India forthwith, that the Queen has become a Catholic or a
Mohamedan, and that the whole population of India is to be con-
verted to Christianity by force. The external appearance of the
native papers is sometimes as comical as their matter. The
Umritsur Commercial Advertiser, of which nothing is English
but the title, gives, for instance, the time tables of the Punjaub
Railway on its back sheet. The page, which is a mere maze of
dots and crooked lines, has at the top a cut of a railway train, in
which guards apparently cocked-hatted, but probably meant to be
wearing pith helmets, are represented sitting on the top of each
carriage with their legs dangling down in front of the windows.

Neither Christianity nor native reformed religions make
much show in the North Western census. The Christians are
strongest in the South of India, the Hindoo reformers in the

* Something of the kind is now done.

<5iiAJ> V.]

Punjaub. The Sikhs themselves, and the Kookhas, Nirunkafees,
Goolab Dasseas, Naukeeka-punth, and many other Punjaubee
sects, all show more or less hostility to caste ; but in the
North- West Provinces caste distinctions flourish, although in
reality they have no doubt lost strength. The high-caste men
are beginning to find their caste a drawback to their success
in life, and are given to concealing it Just as with ourselves
kings gc incognito when they travel for pleasure, so the Bengal
sepoy hides his Brahminical string under his cloth, in order
that he may be sent on foreign service without its being known
that by crossing the seas he will lose caste.

Judging by the unanimous opinion of the native press on
the doings of the Maharajahs of Bombay, and on the licen-
tiousness of the Koolin Brahmins, many of our civilians have
come to think that Hindooism in its present shape has lost the
support of a large number of the more intelligent Hindoos, but
there is little reason to believe that this is the case. In Calcutta
the Church of Hindoo Deists is gaining ground, and one of
their leaders is said to have met with some successes during a
recent expedition to the North-West, but of this there is no
proof. The little regard that many high-caste natives show for
caste, except as a matter of talk, merely means that caste is less
an affair of religion than of custom, but that it is a matter
of custom does not show that its force is slight ; on the con-
trary, custom is the lord of India.

The success of Mohamedanism in India should show that
caste has never been strong except so far as caste is custom.
It is true that the peasants in Orissa starved by the side of
the sacred cows, but this was custom too : any one man killing the
cow would have been at once killed by his also starving
neighbours for breaking custom ; but once change the custom
by force, and there is no tendency to return to the former state
of things. The Portuguese and the Mohamedans alike made
converts by compulsion, yet when the pressure was removed,
there was no return to the earlier faith. Of the nature of caste
we had an excellent example in the behaviour of the troopers
of a Bengal cavalry regiment three weeks before the outbreak
of the mutiny of 1857, when they said that for their part they
knew that their cartridges were not greased with the fat of

4J2 0 K2A TER BHtTA IN.

cows, but that, as they looked as though they were, it came to
the same thing, for they should lose caste if their friends saw
them touch the cartridges in question.

It was the cry of infringement of custom that was raised
against us by the mutineers : " They aim at subverting our insti-
tutions ; they have put down the suttee of the Brahmins, the
infanticide of the Marattas, caste and adoption are despised ;
they aim at destroying all our religious customs," was the most
powerful cry that could be raised. It is one against which we
shall never be wholly safe ; but it is the custom and not the
religion which is the people's especial care.

There is one point in which caste forms a singular difficulty
in our way, which has not yet been brought sufficiently home
to us. The comparatively fair treatment which is now extended
to the low-caste and no-caste men is itself an insult to the
high-caste nobility ; and while the no-caste men care little how
we treat them provided we pay them well, and the bunnya, or
shop-keeping class, encouraged by the improvement, cry out
loudly that the Government wrongs them in not treating them
as Europeans, the high-caste men are equally disgusted with
our good treatment both of middle-class and inferior Hindoos.
These things are stumbling-blocks in our way chiefly because
no amount of acquaintance with the various phases of caste
feeling is sufficient to bring home its importance to English-
men. The Indian is essentially the caste man, the Saxon as
characteristically the no-caste man, and it is difficult to produce
a mutual understanding. Just as in England the people are
too democratic for the Government, in India the Government
is too democratic for the people.

Although caste has hitherto been but little shaken, there are
forces at work which must in time produce the most grave
results. The return to their homes of natives who have emi-
grated and worked at sugar-planting in Mauritius, and coffee-
growing in Ceylon, mixing with negroes and with Europeans, will
gradually aid in the subversion of caste distinctions, and the
Parsees will give their help towards the creation of a healthier
feeling. The young men of the merchant-class — who are all
pure deists — set an example of doing away with caste distinc-
tions which will gradually affect the whole population of the

Ciut>. V.] CAsTK 45:

towns ; railways will act upon the labourers and agficull arists ; a
closer intercourse with Europe will possibly go hand in hand
with universal instruction in the English tongue, and the
indirect results of Christian teaching will continue to be, as they
have been, great.

The positive results of missionary work in India have hitherto
been small. Taking the census as a guide, in the district ot
Mooradabad we find but 107 Christians in 1,100,000 people;
in Budaon, 64 " Christians, Europeans, and Eurasians " (half-
castes, out of 900,000 people; in Bareilly, 137 native Christians
in a million and a half of people ; in Shajehanpoor, 98 in a
million people ; in Turrai, none in a million people ; in Etah,
no native Christians, and only twenty Europeans to 614,000
people ; in the Banda district, thirteen native Christians out of
three quarters of a million of people; in Goruckpoor, 100
native Christians out of three and a half millions of people.
Not to multiply instances, this proportion is preserved through-
out the whole of the districts, and the native Christians in the
North-West are proved to form but an insignificant fraction of
the population.

The number of native Christians in India is extremely small.
Twenty-three societies, having three hundred Protestant mis-
sionary stations, more than three hundred native missionary
churches, and five hundred European preachers, costingwith their
assistants two hunded thousand pounds a year, profess only to
show a hundred and fifty thousand converts, of whom one-seventh
are communicants. The majority of the converts who are not
communicants are converts only upon paper, and it may be
said that of the real native non-Catholic Christians there are not
in India more than 40,000, of whom half are to be found among
the devil-worshippers of Madras. Some of the Coles of Chota-
nagpore became Christians on the ground that as witches had
no power over Christians, Christianity must be the best fetish.
The so-called " aboriginal " hill-tribes, having no elaborate re-
ligious system of their own, are not tied down to the creed of
their birth in the same way as are Mohamedans and Hindoos,
among whom our missionaries make no way whatever. The
native Protestant's position is a fearful one, except in such
a city as Madras, for he wholly loses caste, and becomes an

2 F

434" Gk&AiER BRTTAttf. [6&\t. f .

outlaw from his people. The native Catholic continues to be a
caste man, and sometimes an idol-worshipper, and the priests
have made a million converts in Southern India.

Besides revealing the fewness of the native Christians, the
North-Western census has shown us plainly the weakness of the
Europeans. In the district of Mooradabad, 1,100,000 people
are ruled by thirty-eight Europeans. In many places two
Europeans watch over 200,000 people. The Eurasians are
about as numerous as the Europeans, to which class they may
for some purposes be regarded as belonging, for the natives
reject their society, and refuse them a place in every caste.
The Eurasians are a much-despised race, the butt of every
Indian story, but as a community they are not to be ranked
high. That they should be ill-educated, vain, and cringing, is
perhaps only what we might expect of persons placed in their
difficult position ; nevertheless, that they are so tends to lessen,
in spite of our better feelings, the pity that we should otherwise
extend towards them.

The census had not only its revelations, but its results. One
effect of the census-taking is to check the practice of infanticide,
by pointing out to the notice of our officers the castes and the
districts in which it exists. The deaths of three or four hundred
children are annually credited to the wolves in the Umritsur dis-
trict of the Punjaub alone, but it is remarked that the " wolves "
pick out the female infants. The great disproportion of the sexes
is itself partly to be explained as the result of infanticide.

One weighty drawback to our influence upon Hindoo morals,
is that in the case of many abuses we legislate without effect,
our laws being evaded where they are outwardly obeyed. The
practice of infanticide exists in all parts of India, but especially
in Rajpootana, and the girls are killed chiefly in order to save
the cost of marrying them — or, rather, of buying husbands for
them. Now, we have " suppressed " infanticide — which means
that children are smothered or starved, instead of being exposed.
It is no easy task to bring about reforms in the customs of the
people of India.

The many improvements in the moral condition of the people
which the census chronicles are steps in a great march. Those
who have known ludia long are aware that a remarkable change

435

has come over the country in the last few years. Small as have
been the positive visible results of Christian teaching, the indirect
effects have been enormous. Among the Sikhs and Marattas,
a spirit of reflection, of earnest thought, unusual in natives, has
been aroused ; in Bengal it has taken the form of pure deism,
but then Bengal is not India. The spirit rather than the doc-
trinal teaching of Christianity has been imbibed : a love of truth
appeals more to the feelings of the upright natives than do the
whole of the nine-and-thirty Articles. Here, as elsewhere, the
natives look to deeds, not words; the example of a Frere is
worth the teaching of a hundred missionaries, painstaking and
earnest though they be.

2 F 2

6KKATEJI /.

[CHAP. YX

CHAPTER VI.

MOHAMEDAN ClTIES.

THROUGH Mirzapore, Allahabad, and Futtehpore, I passed on
to Cawnpore, spending but little time at Allahabad ; for though
the city is strategically important, there is in it but little to be
seen. Like all spots of the confluence of rivers, Allahabad is
sacred with the Hindoo ; for it stands, they say, at the meet-
ing-point of no less than three great streams — the Ganges, the
Jumna, and a river of the spirit-land. To us poor pagans, the
third stream is invisible; not so to the faithful. Catching a
glimpse of Marochetti's statue at the Cawnpore well, as I
hurried through that city, I diverged from the East Indian
Railway, and took dawk-carriage to Lucknow.

As compared with other Indian cities, the capital of Oude is
a town to be seen in driving rather than in walking ; the general
effects are superior in charm and beauty to the details, and the
vast size of the city makes mere sight-seeing a work of diffi-
culty. More populous before 1857 than either Calcutta or
Bombay, it is still twice as large as Liverpool. Not only, how-
ever, is Lucknow the most perfect of the modern or Italianised
Oriental towns, but there are in it several buildings that have
each the charm of an architecture special to itself. Of these,
the Martiniere is the most singular, and it looks like what it is
• — the freak of a wealthy madman. Its builder was Genera!
Marline, a Frenchman in the service of the Kings of Oude.
Not far behind the Martiniere is the Dilkousha — a fantastic
specimen of an Oriental hunting-lodge. The ordinary show-
building of the place, the Kaiser-Bagh, or Palace of the Kings
of Oude, is a paltry place enough, but there is a certain
grandeur in the view of the great Imaumbara and the Hoose-

cmr. n. J MO HAM ED AN CITIES. 437

inabdd from a point whence the two piles form to tlie eye but
one. The great Imaumbara suffered terribly in 1858 from the
wanton destruction which our troops committed everywhere
during the war of the mutiny. Had they confined themselves
to outrages such as these, however, but little could have been
said against the conduct of the war. There is too much fear
that the English, unless held in check, exhibit a singularly
strong disposition towards cruelty, wherever they have a weak
enemy to meet.

The stories of the Indian mutiny and of the Jamaica riot are
but two out of many — two that we happen to have heard ; but
the Persian war in 1857 and the last of the Chinese campaigns
are not without their records of deliberate barbarity and wrong.
From the first officer of one of the Peninsular and Oriental
steamers, which was employed in carrying troops up the Eu-
phrates during the Persian war, I heard a story that is the type
of many such.. A Persian drummer-boy of about ten years
old was seen bathing from the bank one morning by the officers
on deck. Bets were made as to the chance of hitting him
with an Enfield rifle, and one of the betters killed him at the
first shot.

It is not only in war-time that our cruelty comes out ; it is
often seen in trifles during peace. Even a traveller, indeed,
becomes so soon used to see the natives wronged in every way
by people of quiet manner and apparent kindness of disposition,
that he ceases to record the cases. In Madras roads, for
instance, I saw a fruit-seller hand up some limes to a lower-deck
port, just as we were weighing anchor. Three Anglo-Indians
(men who had been out before) asked in chorus " How much ?"
" One quarter rupee." " Too much." And, without more ado,
paying nothing, they pelted the man with his own limes, of
which he lost more than half. In Ceylon, near Bentotte rest-
house, a native child offered a handsome cowrie (of a kind
worth in Australia about five shillings, and certainly worth
something in Ceylon) to the child of a Mauritius coffee-planter
who was travelling with us to Columbo, himself an old Indian
omcer. The white child took it, and would not give it up.
The native child cried for money, or to have his shell back,
but the mother of the white child exclaimed, " You be hanged ;

4}8 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. vi.

it's worth nothing ;" and off came the shell with us in the dawk.
Such are the small but galling wrongs inflicted daily upon the
Indian natives. It was a maxim of the Portuguese Jesuits that
men who live long among Asiatics seldom fail to learn their
vices, but our older civilians treat the natives with strict justice,
and Anglo-Indian ladies who have been reared in the country
are generally kind to their own servants, if somewhat harsh
towards other natives. It is those who have been in the country
from five to ten years, and especially soldiers, who treat the
natives badly. Such men I have heard exclaim that the new
penal code has revolutionised the country. " Formerly," they
say, " you used to send a man to a police-officer or a magistrate

with a note : — ' My dear . Please give the bearer twenty

lashes,' but now the magistrates are afraid to act, and your
servant can have you fined for beating him." In spite of the
lamentations of Anglo-Indians over the good old days, I
noticed in all the hotels in India the significant notice, " Gen-
tlemen are earnestly requested not to strike the servants."

The jokes of a people against themselves are not worth
much, but may be taken in aid of other evidence. The two
favourite Anglo-Indian stories are that of the native who, being
asked his religion, said, "Me Christian — me get drunk like
massa ;" and that of the young officer who, learning Hindo-
stanee in 1858, had the difference between the negative "ne""
and the particle "ne" explained to him by the moonshee,
when he exclaimed : " Dear me ! I hanged lots of natives last
year for admitting that they had not been in their villages for
months. I suppose they meant to say that they had not left
their villages for months." It is certain that in the suppression
of the mutiny hundreds of natives were hanged by Queen's
officers who, unable to speak a word of any native language,
could neither understand evidence nor defence.

It is in India, when listening to a mess-table conversation on
the subject of looting, that we begin to remember our descent
from Scandinavian sea-king robbers. Centuries of education
have not purified the blood : our men in India can hardly set
eyes upon a native prince or a Hindoo palace before they cry,
" What a place to break up /" " What a fellow to loot /" When
I said to an officer who had been stationed at Secrole in the

CHAP, vi.] MOHAMEDAN CITIES. - 43 9

early days of the mutiny, " I suppose you were afraid that the
Benares people would have attacked you," his answer was,
" Well, for my part, I rather hoped they would, because then
we should have thrashed them and looted the city. It hadn't
been looted for two hundred years."

Those who doubt that Indian military service makes soldiers
careless of men's lives, reckless as to the rights of property,
and disregardful of human dignity, can hardly remember the
letters which reached home in 1857, in which an officer in high
command during the march upon Cawnpore reported, " Good

bag to-day ; polished off rebels," it being borne in mind

that the " rebels " thus hanged or blown from guns were not
taken in arms, but villagers apprehended " on suspicion."
During this march, atrocities were committed in the burning of
villages, and massacre of innocent inhabitants, at which Mo-
hamed Togluk himself would have stood ashamed, and it would
be to contradict all history to assert that a succession of such
deeds would not prove fatal to our liberties at home.

The European officers of native regiments, and many officers
formerly in the Company's .service, habitually show great kind-
ness to the natives, but it is the benevolent kindness of the
master for a favourite slave, of the superior for men immeasur-
ably beneath him ; there is little of the feeling which a common
citizenship should bestow, little of that equality of man which
Christianity would seem to teach, and which our Indian Govern-
ment has for some years favoured.

At Lucknow I saw the Residency, and at Cawnpore, on my
return to the East Indian Railway, the entrenchments which
were, each of them, the scene in 1857 of those defences against
the mutineers generally styled " glorious " or " heroic," though
made by men fighting with ropes about their necks. The suc-
cessful defences of the fort at Arrah and of the Lucknow
Residency were rather testimonies to the wonderful fighting
powers of the English than to their courage, — for cowards
would fight when the alternative was, fight or die. As far as
Oude was concerned, the "rebellion" of 1857 seems to have
been rather a war than a mutiny ; but the habits o f the native
princes would probably have led them to have acted as trea-
cherously at Lycknow in the case of a surrender as did the

440 CHEATER BRI1AIS. [CHAP, vt

Nana at Cawnpore, ami our officers wisely determined that in
no event would they treat for terms. What is to be regretted
is that we as conquerors should have shown the Oude insur-
gents no more mercy than they would have shown to us, and
that we should have made use of the pretext that the rising
was a mere mutiny of our native troops, as an excuse for hang-
ing in cold blood the agriculturists of Oude. Whatever the
duplicity of their rulers, whatever the provocation to annexation
may have been, there can be no doubt that the revolution in
the land-laws, set on foot by us, resulted in the offer of a career
as native policemen or railway ticket-clerks to men whose
ancestors were warriors and knights when ours wore woad ;
and we are responsible before mankind for having treated as
flagrant treason and mutiny a legitimate war on the part of the
nobility of Oude. In the official papers of the Government of
the North-West Provinces, the so-called " mutiny " is styled
more properly " a grievous civil war."

There is much reason to fear, not that the mutiny will be loo
long remembered, but that it will be too soon forgotten. Ten
years ago, Monghyr was an ash-heap, Cawnpore a name of
horror, Delhi a stronghold of armed rebels, yet now we can
travel without change of cars through peaceful and prosperous
Monghyr and Cawnpore — a thousand and twenty miles — in
forty hours, and find at the end of our journey that shaded
boulevards have already taken the place of the walls of Delhi.

Quitting the main line of the East India Railway at Toondla
Junction, I passed over a newly-made branch road to Agra.
The line was but lately opened, and birds without number sat
upon the telegraph-posts, and were seemingly too astonished to
fly away from the train, while, on the open barrens, herds of
Indian antelopes grazed fearlessly, and took no notice of us
when we passed.

Long before we entered Akbarabad, as the city should be
called, by the great new bridge across the Jumna, I had sighted
in the far distance the majestic, shining dome of the famed Taj
Mahal ; but when arrived within the city, I first visited the
citadel and ramparts. The fort and palace of Akbar are the
Moslem creed in stone. Without — turned towards the un-
believer and the foe — the far- fajmecj triple vyajls, frowning one

CHAP. YI.] MOIIAMEDAN CITIES. 441

above the other with the frown that a hill fanatic wears before
he strikes the infidel ; within is the secure paradise of the
believing " Emperor of the world " — delicious fountains pouring
into basins of the whitest marble, beds of rose and myrtle,
balconies and pavilions ; part of the zenana, or women's wing,
overhanging the river, and commanding the distant snow-dome
of the Taj. Within, too, the " Motee Musj id "—"Pearl of
Mosques " in fact as well as name — a marble-cloistered court,
to which an angel architect could not add a stone, nor snatch
one from it without spoiling all. These for believers ; for non-
believers the grim old Saracenic " Hall of the Seat of Judgment/'
The palace, except the mosque, which is purity itself, is over-
laid with a crust of gems. There is one famed chamber — a
woman's bath-house — the roof and sides of which are covered
with tiny silver-mounted mirrors, placed at such angles as to
reflect to infinity the figures of those who stand within the
bath ; and a court is near at hand, paved with marble squares
in black and white, over which Akbar and his vizier used to sit,
and gravely play at draughts with dancing girls for " pieces."

On the river bank, a mile from Akbar's palace, in the centre
of a vast garden entered through the noblest gateways in the
world, stands the Taj Mahal, a terrace rising in dazzling white-
ness from a black mass of cypresses, and bearing four lofty,
delicate minars, and the central pile that gleams like an Alp
against the deep-blue sky — minars, terrace, tomb, all of spotless
marble, and faultless shape. Its Persian builders named the
Taj " the palace floating in the air."

Out of the fierce heat and blazing sunlight you enter into chill
and darkness, but soon begin to see the hollow dome growing
into form above your head, and the tomb itself — that of Noor
Mahal, the favourite queen of Shah Jehan — before you, and
beside it her husband's humbler grave. Though within and
without the Taj is white, still here you find the walls profusely
jewelled, and the purity retained. Flowers are pictured on
every block in mosaic of cinnamon-stone, cornelian, turquoise,
amethyst, and emerald ; the corridors contain the whole Koran,
inlaid in jet-black stone, yet the interior as a whole exceeds in
chastity the spotlessness of the outer dome. Oriental, it is not
barbaric, and a sweet melancholy is the effect the Taj produces

44 J GREATER BRITAIN. (CHAP. w

on the mind, when seen by day ; in the still moonlight, the form
is too mysterious to be touching.

In a Persian manuscript, there still remains a catalogue of the
prices of the gems made use of in the building of the Taj, and
of the places from which they came. Among those named are
coral from Arabia, sapphires from Moldavia, amethysts from
Persia, crystal from China, turquoises from Thibet, diamonds
from Bundelcund, and lapis-lazuli from Ceylon. The stones
were presents or tribute to the Emperor, and the master masons
came mostly from Constantinople and Bagdad — a fact which
should be remembered when we are discussing the intellectual
capacity of the Bengal Hindoos. That a people who paint their
cows pink with green spots, and their horses orange or bright
red, should be the authors of the Pearl Mosque and the Taj,
would be too wonderful for our belief, but the Mohamedan
conquerors brought with them the chosen artists of the Moslem
world. The contrast between the Taj and the Monkey Temple
at Benares reminds one of that between a Cashmere and a
Norwich shawl.

It is not at Agra alone that we meet the works of Mogul
emperors. Much as we have ourselves done in building roads
and bridges, there are many parts of Upper India where the
traces of the Moslem are still more numerous than are at pre-
sent those of the later conquerors of the unfortunate Hindoos.
Mosques, forts, conduits, bridges, gardens — all the works of the
Moguls are both solid and magnificent, and it was with almost
reverential feelings that I made my pilgrimage to the tomb at
Secundra of the great Emperor Akbar, grandfather of Shah
Jehan, son of Hoomayoon, and founder of Agra city.

It is to be remarked that the Mohamedans in India make a
considerable show for their small numbers. Of the great cities
of India, the three Presidency towns are English ; and the three
gigantic cities of Delhi, Agra, and Lucknow, chiefly Mohamedan.
Benares alone is a Hindoo city, and even in Benares the Mo-
hamedans have their temples. All the great buildings of India
are Mohamedan ; so are all the great works that are not Eng-
lish. Yet even in the Agra district, the Mohamedans are only
one-twelfth of the population, but they live chiefly in the towns.

The history of the Mogul empire of India from the time of

vi. j MOIIAMEDAN CITIES. 44J

the conquest of the older empire by Tamerlane in the fourteenth
century, and the forced conversion to Mohamedanism of a vast
number of Hindoos, and that of Akbar's splendour and enor-
mous power down to the transportation of the last emperor in
1857 to Rangoon, and the shooting of his sons in a dry ditch by
Captain Hodson, is one for us to ponder carefully. Those who
know what we have done in India, say that even in our codes
— and they are allowed to be our best claim to the world's
applause — we fall short of Akbar's standard.

Delhi, the work of Shah Jehan, founder of the Taj and the
Pearl Mosque, was built by him in a wilderness, as was Agra by
the Emperor Akbar. We who have seen the time that has
passed since its foundation by Washington before the capital of
the United States has grown out of the village shape, cannot
deny that the Mogul emperors, if they were despots, were at
least tyrants possessed of imperial energy. Akbar built Agra
twenty or thirty miles from Futtehpore Sikri, his former capital ;
but Jehan had the harder task of forcing his people to quit an
earlier site not five miles from modern Delhi, while Akbar
merely moved his palace, and let the people follow.

Delhi suffered so much at our hands during the stonn in
1857, and has suffered so much since in the way of Napoleonic
boulevards intended to prevent the necessity of storming it
again, that it must be much changed from what it was before
the war. The walls which surround the city are nearly as grand
as those of the fort at Agra, and the gate towers are very
Gibraltars of brick and stone, as we found to our cost when we
battered the Cashmere Gate in 1857. The palace and the
Motee Musjid are extremely fine, but inferior to their namesakes
at Agra; and the Jumna Musjid — reputed the most beautiful,
as it is the largest, mosque in the world — impressed me only
by its size. The view, however, from its minars is one of the
whole North- West. The vast city becomes an ant-heap, and
you instinctively peer out into space, and try to discern the sea
towards Calcutta or Bombay.

The historical memories that attach to Delhi differ from those
that we associate with the name of Agra. There is little plea-
sure in the contemplation of the zenana, where the miseralJe
old man, the ast of the Moguls, dawdled away his years.

444 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. vii.

CHAPTER VII.
SIMLA.

AFTER visiting Nicholson's tomb at the Cashmere Gate, I en-
tered my one-horse dawk — the regulation carriage of India—-
and set off for Kurnaul and Simla, passing between the sand-
hills, gravel-pits, and ruined mosques through which the rebel
cavalry made their famous sortie upon our camp. It was even-
ing when we started, and as the dawk-gharrees are so arranged
that you can lie with comfort at full-length, but cannot sit with-
out misery, I brought my canvas bag into service as a pillow,
and was soon asleep.

When I woke we had stopped ; and when I drew the sliding
shutter that does duty for door and window, and peered out
into the darkness, I discovered that there was no horse in the
shafts, and that my driver and his horse-syce — or groom — were
smoking- their hubble-bubbles at a well in the company of a
passing friend. By making free use of the strongest language
that my dictionary contained, I prevailed upon the men to put
in a fresh horse, but starting was a different matter. The horse
refused to budge an inch, except, indeed, backwards or
sideways towards the ditch. Six grooms came running from
the stable, and placed themselves one at each wheel, and
one on each side of the horse, while many boys pushed
behind. At a signal from the driver, the four wheel-
men threw their whole weight on the spokes, and one of the
men at the horse's head held up the obstinate brute's off fore-
leg, so that he was fairly run off the ground, and forced to make
a start, which he did with a violent plunge, for which all the
grooms were, however, well prepared. As they yelled with
triumph, we dashed along for some twenty yards, then swerved
sideways, and came to a dead stop. Again and again the start-

CHAI\ VliJ SIMLA. 445

ing process was repeated, till at last the horse went off at a
gallop, which carried us to the end of the stage. This b the
only form of starting known to up-country horses, as I soon
found ; but sometimes even this ceremony fails to start the horse,
and twice in the Delhi-to-Kalka journey we lost a quarter of an
hour over horses, and had finally to get others from the stable.

About midnight we reached a Government bungalow, or road-
side inn, where I was to sup, and five minutes produced a
chicken curry which, in spite of its hardness, was disposed of in
as many more. Meanwhile a storm had come rumbling and
roaring across the skies, and when I went to the door to start,
the bungalow butler and cook pointed to the gharree, and told
me that driver and horse were gone. Not wishing the bungalow
men to discover how small was my stock of Hindostanee, I paid
careful attention to their conversation, and looked up each time
that I heard " sahib," as I knew that then they must be talking
about me. Seeing this, they seemed to agree that I was a
thorough Hindostanee scholar, but too proud to answer when
they spoke. Whilst they were humbly requesting that I would
bow to the storm and sleep in the bungalow, which was filled
with twittering sparrows, waked by the thunder or the lights, I
was reading my dictionary by the faint glimmer of the cocoa-nut
oil-lamp, and trying to find out how I was to declare that I in-
sisted on going on at once. When at last I hit upon my phrase,
the storm was over, and the butler soon found both horse and
driver. After this adventure, my Hindostanee improved fast.

A remarkable misapprehension prevails in England concern-
ing the languages of India. The natives of India, we are inclined
to believe, speak Hindostanee, which is the language of India
as English is that of Britain. The truth is that there are in
India a multitude of languages, of which Hindostanee is not
even one. Besides the great tongues, Urdu, Maratti, and Tamil,
there are dozens, if not hundreds, of local languages, and innu-
merable dialects of each. Hindostanee is a camp language,
which contains many native words, but which also is largely
composed of imported Arabic and Persian words, and which is
not without specimens of English and Portuguese. " Saboon,"
for soap, is the latter ; " glassie," for a tumbler, " putti," for a
bottle, " kobi," for a cabbage, " rikab," for a stirrup, and " i::lubul,"

vlt

for a stable, the former: hut almost every common English
phrase and English word of command is in a cerUin measure
part of the Hindoatanee tongue. Some terms have been in-
geniously perverted ; for instance, " Who comes there ?" has
become " Hookum dar ?" " Stand at ease !" is changed to " Tun-
del tis !" " gymnasium " to " zim-khanah," and " Present arms !"
to " Furyunt ram !" indeed, it is hard to say what is Hindostanee
and what is not ; — " sigya," gin, is derived from the name of an
English distilling firm, but it is a recognised Hindostanee word.
The Hindostanee name for a European lady is " mem sahib,"
a feminine formed from " sahib " — lord, or European — by pre-
fixing to it the English servants' " mum," or corruption of " ma-
dam." Some pure Hindostanee words have a comical sound
enough to English ears, as "hookm," an order, pronounced
" hook'em ;" " misri," sugar, which sounds like " misery ;" " top,"
fever; "molly," a gardener; and "dolly," a bundle of vegetables.

Dawk travelling in the Punjaub is by no means unpleasant ;
by night you sleep soundly, and by day there is no lack of life
in the mere traffic on the road, while the general scene is full of
charm. Here and there are serais, or corrals, built by the
Mogul emperors or by the British Government for the use of
native travellers. Our word " caravansery " is properly "caravan-
serai," an enclosure for the use of those travelling in caravans
The keeper of the serai supplies water, provender, and food,
and at night the serais along the road glow with the cooking
fires and resound with the voices of thousands of natives, who
when on journeys never seem to sleep. Throughout the
plains of India, the high roads pass villages, serais, police-
stations, and groups of trees at almost equal intervals. The
space between clump and clump is generally about three miles,
and in this distance you never see a house, so compact are the
Indian villages. The North-West Provinces are the most
densely-peopled countries of the world, yet between village and
village you often see no trace of man, while jackals roam about
as freely as though the country were an untrodden wilderness.

Each time you reach a clump of banyans, tamarind and tulip
trees, you find the same tenants of its shades : village, police-
station, Government posting-stable, and serai are always enclosed
within its limits. The villages are fortified with lofty walls of

. vri.] 6ttitA. 447

mud or brick, as are the numerous potice-stations" along the
road, where the military constabulary, in their dark blue tunics,
yellow trousers, and huge puggrees of bright red, rise up from
sleep or hookah as you pass, and, turning out with tulwdrs and
rifles, perform the military salute — given in India to the white
face by all native troops, when their own European officers
are not by. Your skin here is your patent of aristocracy and
your passport, all in one.

It is not only by the police and troops that you are saluted ;
the natives all salaam to you — except mere coolies, who do not
think themselves worthy even to offer a salute — and many
Anglo-Indians refuse to return their bow. Every Englishman
in India ought to act as though he were an ambassador of the
Queen and people, and regulate accordingly his conduct in the
most trifling things ; but too often the low bow and humble
" Salaam Sahib " is not acknowledged even by a curt " Salaam."

In the drier portions of the country, women were busy with
knives digging up little roots of grass for horse-food ; and four
or five times a day a great bugling would be heard and answered
by my driver, while the mail-cart shot by us at full speed. The
astonishment with which I looked upon the Indian plains grew
even stronger as I advanced up country. Not only is bush scarce,
and forest never seen, but where there is jungle, it is of the
thinnest and least tropical kind. It would be harder to traverse,
on horse or foot, the thinnest coppice in the south of England
than the densest jungle in the plain country of all India.

Both in the villages and in the desert portions of the road,
the ground-squirrels galloped in troops before the dawk, and
birds without number hopped fearlessly beside us as we passed ;
hoopoes, blue-jays, and minas were the commonest, but there were
many paddy-birds and graceful golden egrets in the lower grounds.

Between Delhi and Kurnaul were many ruins, now green
with the pomegranate leaf, now scarlet with the bloom of the
peacock-tree, and, about the ancient villages, acre after acre of
plantain-garden, irrigated by the conduits of the Mohamedan
conquerors ; at last, Kurnaul itself — a fortified town — seen
through a forest of date, wild mango, and banyan, with patches
of wheat about it, and strings of laden camels winding along the
dusty road. After a bheeslie had poured a skinful of wal er over

443 QPL'ATStt IttttTAtK. [CJIAP. vm

me, T set off again for Kalka, halting in the territory of the
Puttiala Rajah to see his gardens at Pinjore, and then passed
on towards the base of the Himalayan foot-hills. The wheat
harvest was in progress in the Kalka country, and the girls,
reaping with the sickle, and carrying away the sheaves upon
their heads, bore themselves gracefully, as Hindoo women ever
do, and formed a contrast to the coarse old landowners as these
rode past, each followed by his pipe-bearer and his retinue.

A Goorkha battalion and a Thibetan goat-train had just
entered Kalka when I reached it, and the confusion was such
that I started at once in a jampan up the sides of the brown
and desolate hills. A jampan, called tonjon in Madras, is an
arm-chair in shafts, and built more lightly than a sedan ; it is
carried at a short trot by four men, while another four, and a
"mate " or chief, make their way up the hills before you, and meet
you here and there to relieve guard. The hire of the jampan
and nine men is less than that of a pony and groom — a curious
illustration of the cheapness of labour in the East. When you
first reach India, this cheapness is a standing wonder. At your
hotel at Calcutta you are asked, " You wish boy pull punkah all
night ? Boy pull punkah all day and all night for two annas "
($d). On some parts of the railway lines, where there is also a
good road, the natives find it cheaper to travel by palanqueen
than to ride in a third-class railway carriage. It is cheaper in
Calcutta to be carried by four men in a palki than to ride in a
" second-class gharree," or very bad cab ; and the streets of the
city are invariably watered by hand by bheesties with skins.
The key to Indian politics lies in these facts.

At Wilson's at Calcutta, the rule of the hotel obliges one to
hire a kitmutghar, who waits at table. This I did for the
magnificent wage of n</. a day, out of which Cherry — the
nearest phonetic spelling of my man's name — of course fed and
kept himself. I will do him the justice to add that he managed to
make about another shilling a day out of me, and that he always
brought me small change in copper, on the chance that I should
give it him. Small as seemed these wages, I could have hired
him for one-fifth the rate that I have named had I been ready
to retain him in my service for a month or two. Wages in
India are somewhat raised by the practice of dustooree — a

CHAP. rii. J SIMLA. 449

custom by which every native, high or low, takes toll of all
money that passes through his hands. My first introduction to
this institution struck me forcibly, though afterwards I came to
look upon it as tranquilly as old Indians do. It was in the
gardens of the Taj, where, to relieve myself from importunity, I
had bought a photograph of the dome : a native servant of the
hotel, who accompanied me much against my will, and who,
being far more ignorant of English than I was of Hindostanee,
was of absolutely no use, I had at last succeeded in warning off
from my side, but directly I bought the photograph for half a
rupee, he rushed upon the seller, and claimed one-fourth of the
price, or two annas, as his share, I having transgressed his privi-
lege in buying directly instead of through him as intermediary.
I remonstrated, but to my amazement the seller paid the money
quietly, and evidently looked on me as a meddling sort of fellow'
enough for interfering with the institution of dustooree. Cus-
toms, after all, are much the same throughout the world. Our
sportsmen follow the habit of Confucius, whose disciples two or
three thousand years ago proclaimed that " he angled, but did
not use a net; he shot, but not at birds perching;" our servants,
perhaps, are not altogether innocent of dustooree. However
much wages may be supplemented by dustooree, they are low
enough to allow of the keeping of a tribe of servants by persons
of moderate incomes. A small family at Simla " require " three
body servants, two cooks, one butler, two grooms, two gardeners,
two messengers, two nurses, two washermen, two water-carriers,
thirteen jampan-men, one sweeper, one lamp-cleaner, and one
boy, besides the European lady's maid, or thirty-five in all : but
if wages were doubled, perhaps fewer men would be "absolutely
needed." At the house where I stayed at Simla, ten jampan-
men and two gardeners were supposed to be continuously
employed in a tiny flower-garden round the house. To a
European fresh from the temperate climates there is something
irksome in the restraint produced by the constant presence of
servants in every corner of an Indian house. To pull off one's
own socks or pour out the water into the basin for oneself
becomes a much-longed-for luxury. It is far from pleasant to
have three or four natives squatting in front of your door, with
nothing to do unless you find such odd jobs for them as holding

2 G

4?o GREATER BRITAIN. fciup ni.

the heel of your boot while you pull it on, or brushing your
clothes for the fourteenth time.

The greater or less value of the smallest coin in common use
in a country is a rough test of the wealth or poverty of its
inhabitants, and by the application of it to India we find that
country poor indeed. At Agra, I had gone to a money-changer
in the bazaar, and asked him for change, in the cowrie-shells
which do duty as money, for an anna, or \^d. piece. He gave
me handful after handful, till I cried enough. Yet when in the
afternoon of the same day I had a performance on my threshold
of " Tasa-ba-tasa " — that singula* tune which reigns from Java to
the Bosphorus, with Sanscrit words in Persia, and Malay words
in the Eastern islands — the three players seemed grateful for
half-a-dozen of the cowries, for they treated me to a native
"version of " Vee vont gah ham tall mardid, vee vont gah ham
tall mardid," by way of thanks. Many strange natural objects
pass as uncoined money in the East : tusks in Africa, women in
Arabia, human skulls in Borneo : the Red Indians of America,
indeed, sell their neighbours' scalps for money, but have not yet
reached the height of civilization which would be denoted by
their keeping them to use as such ; cowrie-shells, however, pass
as money in almost every ancient trading country of the world.

The historical cheapness of labour in India has led to such
an obstinate aversion to all labour-saving expedients that such
great works as the making of railway embankments and the
boulevard construction at Delhi are conducted by the scraping
together of earth with the hands, and the collected pile is slowly
placed in tiny baskets, much like strawberry pottles, and borne
away on women's heads to its new destination. Wheelbarrows,
water-carts, picks, and shovels are in India all unknown.

If, on my road from Kalka to Simla, I had an example of the
cheapness of Indian labour, I also had one of its efficiency.
The coolie who carried my baggage on his head trotted up the
hills for twenty-one-hours, without halting for more than an hour
or two, and this for two days' pay.

During the first half-hour atter leaving Kalka, the heat was
as great as on the plains, but we had not gone many miles
before we came out of the dust into a new world, and an
atmosphere every breath of which was life. 1 got out, and

CHAP, vn.] SIMLA. 4jf

walked for miles ; and when we halted at a rest-house on the
first plateau, I thoroughly enjoyed a cup of the mountain tea,
and was still more pleased at the sight of the first red-coated
English soldiers that I had seen since I left Niagara. The men
were even attempting bowls and cricket, so cool were the
evenings at this station. There is grim satire in the fact that the
director-general of military gymnastics has his establishment at
Simla, in the cold of the snowy range, and there invents running
drills and such like summer diversions, to be executed by the
unfortunates in the plains below. Bowls, which are an amuse-
ment at Kussoolie, would in the hot weather be death at Kalka,
only ten miles away ; but so short is the memory of climate that
you are no more able to conceive the heat of the plains when
in the hills than the cold of the hills when at Calcutta.

There is no reason except a slight and temporary increase of
cost to prevent the whole of the European troops in India being
concentrated in a few cool and healthy stations. Provided that
all the artillery be retained in the hands of the Europeans,
almost the whole of the English forces might be kept in haJf-a-
dozen hill stations, of which Darjeeling and Bangalore would be
two, and some place near Bombay a third. It has been said
that the men would be incapable, through want of acclimatisa-
tion, of acting on the plains if retained in hill stations except
when their services were needed ; but it is notoriously the fact
that new comers from England — that is, men with health — do
not suffer seriously from heat during the first six months which
they pass upon the plains.

Soon after dark, a terrific thunderstorm came on, the thunder
rolling round the valleys and along the ridges, while the rain
fell in short, sharp showers. My men put me down on the
lee-side of a hut, and squatted for a long smoke. The custom
common to all the Eastern races of sitting round a fire smoking
all night long explains the number and the excellence of their
tales and legends. In Europe we see the Swedish peasants
sitting round their hearths chatting during the long winter
evenings : hence follow naturally the Thor legends : our sailors
are with us the only men given to sitting in groups to talk :
they are noted story-tellers. The word yarn exemplifies
the whole philosophy of the matter. We meet, however, here
£he eternal difficulty of which is cause and which is effect. It

451 GEEATEB BRITAIN. [OTAP. vtl.

is easy to say that the long nights of Norway, the confined
space of the ship, making the fo'castle the sailor's only lounge,
each in their way necessitate the story-telling ; not so in India,
not so in Egypt, in Arabia, in Persia : there can here be no
necessity for men sitting up all night to talk, short of pure love
of talk for talking's sake.

When the light came in the morning, we were ascending the
same strangely-ribbed hills that we had been crossing by torch-
light during the night, and were meeting flat-faced Thibetans,
with hair done into many pig-tails, who were laboriously bring-
ing over the mountain passes Chinese goods in tiny sheep-loads.
For miles I journeyed on, up mountain sides and down into
ravines, but never for a single moment upon a level, catching
sight sometimes of portions of the Snowy Range itself, far
distant, and half mingled with the clouds, till at last a huge
mountain mass rising to the north and east blocked out all view
save that behind me over the sea of hills that I had crossed,
and the scene became monotonously hideous, with only that
grandeur which hugeness carries with it — a view, in short, that
would be fine at sunset, and at no other time. The weather,
too, grew damp and cold — a cruel cold, with driving rain ; and
the landscape was dreariness itself.

Suddenly we crossed the ridge, and began to descend, when
the sky cleared, and I found myself on the edge of the rhodo-
dendron forest — tall trees with dark-green leaves and masses of
crimson flowers ; ferns of a hundred different kinds marking
the beds of the rivulets that coursed down through the woods,
which were filled with troops of chattering monkeys.

Rising again slightly, I began to pass the European bunga-
lows, each in its thicket of deodar, and few with flat ground
enough for more than half a rose-bed, or a quarter of a croquet-
lawn. On either side the ridge was a deep valley, with terraced
rice-fields five thousand feet below, and, in the distance, on the
one side the mist-covered plains lit by the single silvery ribbon
of the distant Sutlej, on the other side the Snowy Range.

The first Europeans whom I met in Simla were the Viceroy's
children and their nurses, who formed with their escort a stately
procession. First came a tall native in scarlet, then a jampan
with a child, then one with a nurse and viceregal baby, and so
on, the bearers wearing scarlet and grey. All the residents a;

ctlAf. V«.] SIMLA. 453

Simla have different uniforms for their jampanees, some clothing
their men in red and green, some in purple and yellow, some in
black and white. Before reaching the centre of the town, I
had met several Europeans riding, although the sun was still
high and hot ; but before evening a hailstorm came across the
range, and filled the woods with a chilling mist, and night found
me toasting my feet at a blazing fire in an Alpine room of
polished pine — a real room, with doors and casement ; not a
section of a street with a bed in it, as are the rooms in the
Indian plains. Two blankets were a luxury in this " tropical
climate of Simla," as one of our best-informed London news
papers once called it. The fact is that Simla, which stands at
from seven to eight thousand feet above the sea, and in latitude
31°, or 7° north of the boundary of the tropics, has a climate
cold in everything except its sun, which is sometimes strong.
The snow lies on the ground at intervals for five months of the
year ; and during what is by courtesy styled " the hot weather,"
cold rains are of frequent occurrence.

The climate of Simla is no mere matter of curiosity : it is a
question of serious interest in connexion with the retention of
our Indian empire. When the Government seeks refuge here
from the Calcutta heat, the various departments are located in
tiny cottages and bungalows up on the mountain and down in
the valley, practically as far from each other as London from
Brighton ; and, moreover, Simla itself is forty miles from Kalka
by the shortest path, and sixty by the better bridle path. There
is clearly much loss of time in sending despatches for half the
year to and from a place like this, and there is no chance of
the railway ever coming nearer to it than Kalka, even if it
reaches that. On the other hand, the telegraph is replacing the
railway day by day, and mountain heights are no bar to wires.
This poor little, uneven hill village has been styled the " Indian
Capua " and nicknamed the " Hill Versailles ;" but so far from
enervating the ministers or enfeebling the administration, Simla
gives vigour to the Government, and a hearty English tone to
the State papeis issued in the hot months. English ministers
are not in London all the year long, and no men, ministers or
not, could stand four years' continual bramwork in Calcutta.
In 1866, the first year of the removal of the Government as a
whole and publication of the Gazette at Simla during the sura-

454 GZEATm WIJTAIN. [CIIAV. vn.

mer, all the arrears of work in all the offices were cleared off ibr
the first time since the occupation by us of any part of India.

Bengal, the North-West Provinces, and the Punjaub must
soon be made into " governorships," instead of " lieutenant-
governorships," so that the Viceroy may be relieved from
tedious work, and time saved by the" Northern Governors
reporting straight home, as do the Governors of Madras and
Bombay, unless a system be adopted under which all shall
report to the Viceroy. At all events, the five divisions must be
put upon the same footing one with another.* This being
granted, there is no conceivable reason for keeping the Viceroy
at Calcutta — a city singularly hot, unhealthy, and out of the
way. On our Council sitting at the capital, we ought to have
natives picked from all India for their honesty, ability, and
discretion ; but so bad is the water at Calcutta, that the
city is deadly to water-drinkers ; and although they value the
distinction of a seat at the Council more than any other honour
within their reach, many of the most distinguished natives in
India have chosen to resign their places rather than pass a
second season at Calcutta.

It is not necessary that we should argue about Calcutta's
disadvantages. It is enough to say that, of all Indian cities,
we have selected for our capital the most distant and the most
unhealthy. The great question is, Shall we have one capital,
or two ? Shall we keep the Viceroy all the year round in a
central but hot position, such as Delhi, Agra, Allahabad, or
Jubbelpore, or else at a less central but cooler station, such as
Nassuck, Poonah, Bangalore, or Mussoorie ? or shall we keep
him at a central place during the cool, and a hill place during
the hot weather ? There can be but little doubt that Simla is a
necessity at present, but with a fairly healthy city, such as Agra,
for the head-quarters of the Government, and the railway open
to within a few miles of Mussoorie, so that men could run to the
hills in six or seven hours, and even spend a few days there in
each summer month, an efficient government could be main-

* An enormous monetary saving — out of which the customs duties could
be remitted — would be effected if the Madras and Bombay governor-
ships were reduced to appointments of £10,000 a year, without a "durbar
fund," and filled by Indian civilians, and if the worse than useless Madras
and Bombay commander-in-chicfships were abolished.

CHAP, vi i.] SIMLA. 455

tained in the plains. We must remember that Agra is now
within twenty-three days of London ; and that, with the Persian
Gulf route open, and a railway from Kurrachee (the natural
port of England in India), leave for home would be a matter
still more simple than it has become already. With some such
central town as Poonah for the capital, the Bombay and Madras
commander-in-chiefships could be abolished, with the result of
saving a considerable expense, and greatly increasing the effi-
ciency of the Indian army. It is probable that Simla will not
continue to be the chosen station of the Government in the
hills. The town is subject to the ravages of dysentery ; the
cost of draining it would be immense, and the water supply is
very limited : the bheesties have often to wait whole hours for
their turn.

Mussoorie has all the advantages and none of the drawbacks
of Simla, and lies compactly in ground on which a small city
could be built, whereas Simla straggles along a narrow mountain
ridge, and up and down the steep sides of an Alpine peak. It
is questionable, however, whether, if India is to be governed
from at home, the seat of Government should not be at
Poonah, within reach of London. The telegraph has already
made viceroys of the ancient kind impossible.

The sunrise view of the Snowy Range from my bungalow was
one rather strange from the multitude of peaks in sight at once
than either beautiful or grand. The desolate ranges of foot-hills
destroy the beauty that the contrast of the deodars, the crimson
rhododendrons, and the snow would otherwise produce, and
the height at which you stand seems to dwarf the distant
ranges ; but from one of the spots which I reached in a moun-
tain march, the prospect was widely different. Here we saw at
once the sources of the Jumna, the Sutlej, and the Ganges, the
dazzling peaks of Gungootrie, of Jumnotrie, and of Kamet ,
while behind us in the distant plains we could trace the Sutlej
itself, silvered by the hazy rays of the half-risen sun. We had
in sight not only the 26,000 feet of Kamet, but no less than
twenty other peaks of over 20,000 feet, snow-clad to their very
bases, while between us and the nearest outlying range were
valleys from which the ear caught the humble murmur of fresh-
risen streams.

456 GREATER BRITAIN. \LI\\\\ Vl-l

CHAPTER VIII.
COLONIZATION.

CONNECTED with the question of the site of the future capital
is that of the possibility of the colonization by Englishmen oi
portions of the peninsula of India.

Hitherto the attempts at settlement which have been made
have been mainly confined to six districts — Mysore, where
there are only some dozen planters ; the Neilgherries proper,
where coffee-planting is largely carried on ; Oude, where many
Europeans have taken land as zemindars, and cultivate a por-
tion of it, while they let out the remainder to natives on the
Metayer plan ; Bengal, where indigo-planting is gaining ground ;
the Himalayan valleys, and Assam. Settlement in the hot
plains is limited by the fact that English children cannot there
be reared, so to the hill districts the discussion must be con-
fined.

One of the commonest of mistakes respecting India consists
fn the supposition that there is available land in large quantities
Dn the slopes of the Himalayas. There are no Himalayan
slopes ; the country is all straight up and down, and for English
colonists there is no room no ground that will grow anything
but deodars, and those only moderately well. The hot sun
dries the ground, and the violent rains follow, and cut it
through and through with deep channels, in this way gradually
making all the hills both steep and ribbed. Mysore is still a
native State, but, in spite of this, European settlement is in-
creasing year by year, and there, as in the Neilgherries proper,
there is room for many coffee-planters, though fever is not
unknown ; but when India is carefully surveyed, the only
district that appears to be thoroughly suited to English settle-

. V1H.J COLONIZATION. 457

ment, as contrasted with mere planting or landholding, is the
valley of Cashmere, where the race would probably not sutler
deterioration. With the exception of Cashmere, none of the
deep mountain valleys are cool enough for permanent European
settlement. Family life is impossible where there is no home ;
you can have no English comfort, no English virtues, in a
climate which forces your people to live out of doors, or else in
rocking-chairs or hammocks. Nightwork and reading are all
out impossible in a climate where multitudes of insects haunt
the air. In the Himalayan valleys, the hot weather is terribly
scorching, and it lasts for half the year, and on the hill-sides
there is but little fertile soil.

The civilians and rulers of India in general are extremely
jealous of the " interlopers," as European settlers are termed ;
and, although tea cultivation was at first encouraged by the
Bengal Government, recent legislation, fair or unfair, has almost
ruined the tea-planters of Assam. The native population of
that district is averse to labour, and coolies from a distance
have to be brought in ; but the Government of India, as the
planters say, interferes with harsh and narrow regulations, and
so enormously increases the cost of imported labour as to ruin
the planters, who, even when they have got their labourers on
the ground, cannot make them work, as there exist no means of
compelling specific performance of a contract to work. The
remedy known to the English law is an action for damages
brought by the employer against the labourer, so with English
obstinacy we declare that an action for damages shall be the
remedy in Burmah or Assam. A provision for attachment of
goods and imprisonment of person of labourers refusing to per-
form their portion of a contract to work was inscribed in the
draft of the proposed Indian " Code of Civil Procedure," but
vetoed by the authorities at home.

The Spanish Jesuits themselves were not more afraid of free
white settlers than is our Bengal Government. An enterprising
merchant of Calcutta lately obtained a grant of vast tracts of
country in the Sunderbunds — the fever-haunted jungle near
Calcutta — and had already completed his arrangements for
importing Chinese labourers to cultivate his acquisitions,
when the jealous civilians got wind of the affair, and forced

458 COLONIZATION. [CHAP. vin.

Government into a most undignified retreat from their agree-
ment.

The secret of this opposition to settlement by Europeans
lies partly in a horror of "low-caste Englishmen," and a
fear that they will somewhat debase Europeans in native
eyes, but far more in the wish of the old civilians to keep
India to themselves as a sort of " happy hunting ground " —
a wish which has prompted them to start the cry of " India
for the Indians " — which of course means India for the Anglo-
Indians.

Somewhat apart from the question of European colonization,
but closely related to it, is that of the holding by Europeans of
landed estates in India. It will perhaps be conceded that the
European should, on the one hand, be allowed to come into
the market and purchase land, or rent it from the Government
or from individuals, on the same conditions as those which
wouid apply to natives, and, on the other hand, that special
grants should not be made to Europeans as they were by us in
Java in old times. In Eastern countries, however, government
can hardly be wholly neutral, and, whatever the law, if European
landholders be encouraged, they will come ; if discouraged, they
will stay away. From India they stop away, while such as do
reach Hindostan are known in official circles by the significant
name of " interlopers."

Under a healthy social system, which the presence of English
planters throughout India, and the support which would thus
be given to the unofficial press, would of itself do much to
create, the owning of land by Europeans could produce nothing
but good. The danger of the use of compulsion towards the
natives would not exist, because in India — unlike what is the
case in Dutch Java — the interest of the ruling classes would be
the other way. If it be answered that, once in possession ot
the land, the Europeans would get the government into their own
hands, we must reply that they could never be sufficiently
numerous to have the slightest chance of doing anything of the
kind. As we have seen in Ceylon, the attempt on the part of
the planters to usurp the government is sternly repressed by
the English people, the moment that its true bearing is under-
stood, and yet in Ceylon the planters are far more numerous

COLONIZATION. 459

in proportion to the population than they can ever be in India,
where the climate of the plains is fatal to European children,
and where there is comparatively little land upon the hills;
while in Ceylon the coffee-tracts, which are mountainous and
healthy, form a sensible proportion of the whole lands of the
island. It is true that the press, when once completely in the
planters' hands, may advocate their interests at the expense of
those of the natives, but in the case of Queensland we have
seen that this is no protection to the planters against the inqui-
sitive home eye, which would be drawn to India as it has been
to Queensland by the reports of independent travellers, and of
interested but honest missionaries.

The infamies of the foundation of the indigo-plantations in
Bengal, and of many of the tea-plantations in Assam, in which
violence was freely used to make the natives grow the selected
crop, and in some cases the land actually stolen from its owners,
have gone far to make European settlement in India a by-word
among the friends of the Hindoo ; but it is clear that an efficient
police would suffice to restrain these illegalities and hideous
wrongs. It might become advisable in the interest of the
natives to provide that not only the officers, but also the sub-
officers and some constables of the police, should be Europeans
in districts where the plantations lay, great care being taken to
select honest and fearless men, and to keep a strict watch on
their conduct.

The two great securities against that further degradation of
the natives which has been foretold as a result of the expected
influx of Europeans are the general teaching of the English lan-
guage, and the grant of perfect freedom of action (the Govern-
ment standing aloof) to missionaries of every creed under
heaven. The bestowal of the English tongue upon the natives
will give the local newspapers a larger circulation among them
than among the planter classes, and so, by the powerful motive
of self-interest, force them to the side of liberty; while the
honesty of some of the missionaries and the interest of others
will certainly place the majority of the religious bodies on the
side of freedom. It is needless to say that the success of a
policy which would be opposed by the local press and at the
same time by the chief English Churches is not an eventuality

4Co GREATER BRITAIN. [cHAF. vm,

about which we need give ourselves concern, and it is therefore
probable that on the whole the encouragement of European
settlement upon the plains would be conducive to the welfare
of the native race.

That settlement or colonization would make our tenure of
India more secure is very doubtful, and, if certain, would be a
point of little moment. If, when India has passed through the
present transition stage from a country of many peoples to a
country of only one, we cannot continue to rule her by the con-
sent of the majority of her inhabitants, our occupation of the
country must come to an end, whether we will or no. At the
same time, the union of interests and community of ideas which
would rise out of well-ordered settlement would do much to
endear our Government to the great body of the natives. As
a warning against European settlement as it is, every English-
man should read the drama " Nil Darpan."

During my stay at Simla, I visited a pretty fair in one of the
neighbouring valleys. There was much buffoonery and dancing
— among other things, a sort of jig by a fakeer, who danced him-
self into a fit, real or pretended ; but the charm of this, as of all
Hindoo gatherings, lay in the colour. The women of the Pun-
jaub dress very gaily for their fetes, wearing tight-fitting trousers
of crimson, blue, or yellow, and a long thin robe of white, or
crimson-grounded Cashmere shawl. Bracelets and anklets of
silver, and a nose-ring, either huge and thin, or small and nearly
solid, complete the dress.

At the fair were many oi the Goorkhas (of whom there is a
regiment at Simla), who danced, and seemingly enjoyed them-
selves immensely ; indeed, the natives of all parts of India,
from Nepaul to the Deccan, possess a most enviable faculty of
amusement, and they say that there is a professional buffoon
attached to every Goorkha regiment. Their full-dress is like
that of the French chasseurs & pied, but in their undress uniform
of white, the trousers worn so tight as to wrinkle from stretch-
ing— these dashing little fellows, with their thin legs, broad
shoulders, bullet heads, and flat faces, look extremely like a
corps of jockeys. A general inspecting one of these regiments
once said to the colonel : " Your men are small, sir." " Their
pay is small, sir !" growled the colonel, in a towering passion.

CHAP, vrn.] COLONIZATION. 461

There were unmistakeable traces of Buddhist architecture in
the little Hindoo shrine. Of the Chinese pilgrimages to India
in the Buddhist period there are many records yet extant, and
one of these, we are told, relates how. as late as the four-
teenth century, the Emperor of China asked leave of the Delhi
ruler to rebuild a temple at the southern base of the Himalayas,
inasmuch as it was visited by his Tartar people.

GREATER BRTTATN.

CHAPTER IX
THE GAZETTE.

OF all printed information upon India, there is none which,
either for value or interest, can be ranked with that contained
in the Government Gazette, which during my stay at Simla was
published at that town, the Viceroy's Council having moved
there for the hot weather. Not only are the records of the
mere routine business interesting from their variety, but almost
every week there is printed along with the Gazette a supplement,
which contains memoranda from leading natives or from the
representatives of the local governments upon the operations of
certain customs, or on the probable effects of a proposed law,
or similar communications. Sometimes the circulars issued by
the Government are alone reprinted, "with a view to elicit
opinions," but more generally the whole of the replies are given.
It is difficult for English readers to conceive the number and
variety of subjects upon which a single number of the Gazette
will give information of some kind. The paragraphs are strung
together in the order in which they are received, without arrange-
ment or connexion. " A copy of a treaty with his Highness
the Maharajah of Cashmere " stands side by side with a grant
of three months' leave to a lieutenant of Bombay Native Foot ;
while above is an account of the suppression of the late mur-
derous outrages in the Punjaub, and below a narrative of the
upsetting of the Calcutta mails into a river near Jubbelpore.
" A khureta from the Viceroy to his Highness the Rao Oomaid
Singh Bahadoor" orders him to put down crime in his dominions,
and the humble answer of the Rao is printed, in which he
promises to do his best. Paragraphs are given to "the float-
ing dock at Rangoon;" <:the disease among mail horses;"

CHAP, nc.] THE GAZETTE. 463

" the Suez canal ;" a the forests of Oude ;" and " polygamy
among the Hindoos." The Viceroy contributes a " note on
the administration of the Khetree chieftainship ;" the Bengal
Government sends a memorandum on " bribery of telegraph
clerks;" and the Resident of Kotah an official report of the
ceremonies attending the reception of a viceregal khureta
restoring the honours of a salute to the Maha Rao of Kotah.
The khureta was received in state, the letter being mounted
alone upon an elephant magnificently caparisoned, and saluted
from the palace with 101 guns. There is no honour that we
can pay to a native prince so great as that of increasing his
salute ; and, on the other hand, when the Guicowar of Baroda
allows a suttee, or when Jung Bahadoor of Nepaul expresses
his intention of visiting Paris, we punish them by docking them
of two guns, or abolishing their salute, according to the magni-
tude of the offence.

An Order in Council confers upon the High Priest of the
Parsees in the Deccan, " in consideration of his services during
the mutiny of 1857," the honorary title of "Khan Bahadoor."
A paragraph announces that an official investigation has been
made into the supposed desecration by Scindia and the Viceroy
of a mosque at Agra, and that it has been found that the place
in question was not a mosque at all. Scindia had given an en-
tertainment to the Viceroy at the Taj Mahal, and supper had
been laid out at a building in the grounds. The native papers
said the building was a mosque, but the Agra officials triumph-
antly demonstrated that it had been used for a supper to Lord
Ellenborough after the capture of Cabool, and that its name
meant " Feast-place." " Report on the lighthouses of the
Abyssinian coast ; " " Agreement with the Governor of Leh,'
Thibet, in reference to the trans-Himalayan caravans ; the pro-
motion of one gentleman to be " Commissioner of Coorg," and
of another to be "Superintendent of the teak forests of Lower
Burmah;" "Evidence on the proposed measures to suppress
the abuses of polyandry in Travancore and Cochin (by arrange-
ment with the Rajah of Travancore);" " Dismissal of Policeman
Juggernauth Ramkam — Oude division, No. n company — for
gross misconduct ;" " Report on the Orissa famine ;" " Plague
in Turkey ; " " Borer insects in coffee plantations ; " " Presents

464 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. «.

to gentlemen at Fontainebleau for teaching forestry to Indian
officers;" "Report on the Cotton States of America," for the
information of native planters ; " Division of Calcutta into
postal districts " (in Bengalee as well as English) ; " Late en-
gagement between the Punjaub cavalry and the Afghan tribes ;"
" Pension of 3rs. per mensem to the widow (aged 12) of Jamram
Chesa, Sepoy, z'jth Bengal N. I." are other headings. The
relative space given to matters of importance and to those of
little moment is altogether in favour of the latter. The govern-
ment of two millions of people is transferred in three lines, but
a page is taken up with a list of the caste-marks and nose-bor-
ings of native women applying for pensions as soldiers' widows,
and two pages are full of advertisements of lost currency notes.

The columns of the Gazette, or at all events its supplements,
offer to Government officials whose opinion has been asked
upon questions on which they possess valuable knowledge, or
in which the people of their district are concerned, an oppor-
tunity of attacking the acts or laws of the Government itself —
a chance of which they are not slow to take advantage. One
covertly attacks the licence-tax ; a second, under pretence of
giving his opinion on some proposed change in the contract
law, backs the demands of the indigo-planters for a law that
shall compel specific performance of labour-contracts on the
part of the workman, and under penalty of imprisonment;
another lays all the ills under which India can be shown to
suffer at the door of the Home Government, and points out the
ruinous effects of continual changes of Indian Secretaries in
London.

It would be impossible to overrate the importance of the
supplements to the Gazette, viewed either as a substitute for a
system of communicated articles to the native papers, or as ma-
terial for English statesmen, whether in India or at home, or as
a great experiment in the direction of letting the people of
India legislate for themselves. The results of no less than three
Government inquiries were printed in the supplement during
my stay in India, the first being in the shape of a circular to
the various local governments requesting their opinion on the
proposed extension to natives of the testamentary succession
laws contained in the Indian Civil Code; while the second

o&Ah ix.j fllE

related to the "ghaut murders," and the third to the abuses of
polygamy among the Hindoos. The second and third inquiries
were conducted by means of circulars addressed by Govern-
ment to those most interested, whether native or European.

The evidence in reply to the u ghaut murder " circular was
commenced by a letter from the Secretary to the Government
of Bengal to the Secretary to the Government of India, calling
the attention of the Viceroy in .Council to an article written in
Bengalee by a Hindoo in the Dacca Prokash on the practice of
taking sick Hindoos to the river-side to die. It appears from
this letter that the local governments pay careful attention to the
opinions of the native papers — unless, indeed, we are to accept
the view that " the Hindoo " was a Government clerk, and the
article written to order — a supposition favoured by its radical
and destructive tone. The Viceroy answered that the local
officers and native gentlemen of all shades of religious opinion
were to be privately consulted. A confidential communication
was then addressed to eleven English and four Hindoo gentle-
men, and the opinions of the English and native newspapers
were unofficially invited. The Europeans were chiefly for the
suppression of the practice ; the natives — with the exception
of one, who made a guarded reply — stated that the abuses of
the custom had been exaggerated, and that they could not re-
commend its suppression. The Government agreed with the
natives, and decided that nothing should be done — an opinion
in which the Secretary of State concurred.

In his reply to the " ghaut murder " circular, the representa-
tive of the orthodox Hindoos, after pointing out that the Dacca
Prokash is the Dacca organ of the Brahmos, or Bengal Deists,
and not of the true Hindoos, went on to quote at length from
the Hindoo scriptures, passages which show that to die in the
Ganges water is the most blessed of all deaths. The quotations
were printed in native character as well as in English in the
Gazette. One of the officials in his reply pointed out that the
discouragement of a custom was often as effective as its pro-
hibition, and instanced the cessation of the practice of "hook-
swinging " and " self-mutilation."

Valuable as is the correspondence as a sample of the method
pursued in such inquiries, the question under discussion has not

2 H

466 G HEATER &&ITATK. [CUAI>. 11.

the impotranr,e that attaches to the examination into the abuses
of the practice of polygamy.

To prevent an outcry that the customs of the Hindoo people
were being attacked, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal stated
in his letters to the Government of India, that it was his wish
that the inquiry should be strictly confined to the abuses of
Koolin polygamy, and that there should be no general examina-
tion into ordinary polygamy, which was not opposed even by
enlightened Hindoos. The polygamy of the Koolin Brahmins
is a system of taking a plurality of wives as a means of sub-
sistence : the Koolins were originally Brahmins of peculiar
merit, and such was their sanctity that there grew up a custom
of payments being made to them by the fathers of the forty or
fifty women whom they honoured by marriage. So greatly has
the custom grown that Koolins have sometimes as many as
eighty wives, and the husband's sole means of subsistence
consists in payments from the fathers of his wives, each of
whom he visits, however, only once in three or four years.
The Koolin Brahmins live in luxury and indolence, their wives
exist in misery, and the whole custom is plainly repugnant to
the teachings of the Hindoo scriptures, and is productive of
vice and crime. The committee, appointed for the consideration
of the subject by the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal — which
consisted of two English civilians and five natives — reported
that the suggested systems of registration of marriages, or of
fines increasing in amount for every marriage after the first,
would limit the general liberty of the Hindoos to take many
wives, which they were forbidden to touch. On the other hand,
to recommend a declaratory law on plural marriages would be
to break their instructions, which ordered them to refrain from
giving the sanction of English law to Hindoo polygamy. One
native dissented from the report, and favoured a declaratory law.

The English idea of " not recognising " customs or religions
which exist among a large number of the inhabitants of English
countries is a strange one, and productive of much harm. It is
not necessary, indeed, that we should countenance the worship
of Juggernauth by ordering our officials to present offerings at
his shrine, but it is at least necessary that we should recognise
native customs by legislating to restrain them within due limits.

<Sut-. «.] WE GAZEW'K, 467

To refuse to " recognise " polygamy, which is the social state of
the vast majority of the citizens of the British empire, is not
less ridiculous than to refuse to recognise that Hindoos are
black.

Recognition is one thing, interference another. How far we
should interfere with native customs is a question upon which
no general rule can be given, unless it be that we should in all
cases of proposed interference with social usages or religious
ceremonies consult intelligent but orthodox natives, and act up
to their advice. In Ceylon, we have prohibited polygamy and
polyandry, although the law is not enforced ; in India, we " un-
officially recognise " the custom ; in Singapore, we have dis-
tinctly recognised it by an amendment to the Indian Succession
Law, which there applies to natives as well as Europeans. In
India, we put down suttee, while, in Australia, we tolerate cus-
toms at least as barbarous.

One of the social systems which we recognise in India is far
more revolting to our English feelings than is that of polygyny
— namely, the custom of polyandry, under which each woman
has many husbands at a time. This custom we unofficially
recognise as completely as we do polygyny, although it prevails
only on the Malabar coast, and among the hill-tribes of the
Himalaya, and not among the strict Hindoos. The Thibetan
frontier tribes have a singular form of the institution, for with
them the woman is the wife of all the brothers of a family, the
eldest brother choosing her, and the eldest son succeeding to
the property of his mother and all her husbands. In Southern
India, the polyandry of the present day differs little from that
which in the middle of the fifteenth century Nicolo de Conti
found flourishing in Calicut. Each woman has several husbands,
some as many as ten, who all contribute to her maintenance,
she living apart from all of them ; and the children are allotted
to the husbands at the will of the wife.

The toleration of polygyny, or common polygamy, is a vexed
question everywhere. In India, all authorities are in favour of
respecting it ; in Natal, opinion is the other way. While we
suppress it in Ceylon, even among black races conquered by us
with little pretext only fifty years ago, we are doubtful as to the
propriety of its suppression by the United States among wliit*

2 II 2

468 GREATER BRITAIN. (V3itAt>. ft.

people, who, whatever was the case with the original leaders,
have for the most part settled down in Utah since it has been
the territory of a nation whose imperial laws prohibit polygamy
in plain terms.

The inquiries into the abuses of polygamy which have lately
been conducted in Bengal and in Natal have revealed singular
differences between the polygamy of the Hindoos and of the
hill-tribes, between Indian and Mormon polygamy, and between
both and the Mohamedan law. The Hindoo laws, while they
limit the number of legal wives, allow of concubines, and, in
the Maharajah case, Sir Joseph Arnould went so far as to say
that polygamy and courtezanship are always found to flourish
side by side, although the reverse is notoriously the case at Salt
Lake City, where concubinage is punishable, in name at least,
by death. Again, polygamy is somewhat discouraged by Moha-
medan and Hindoo laws, and the latter even lay down the sum
which in many cases is to be paid to the first wife as compensa-
tion for the wrong done her by the taking of other wives.
Among the Mormons, on the other hand, polygamy is enjoined
upon the faithful, and, so far from feeling herself aggrieved, the
first wife herself selects the others, or is at the least consulted.
Among some of the hill-tribes of India, such as the Paharis of
Bhaugulpoor, polygamy is encouraged, but with a limitation
to four wives.

Among the Mohamedans, the number of marriages is re-
stricted, and divorce is common ; among the Mormons there is
no limit — indeed, the more wives the greater a man's glory —
and divorce is all but unknown. The greatest, however, of all
the many differences between Eastern and Mormon polygamy
lies in the fact that, of the Eastern wives, one is the chief, while
Mormon wives are absolutely equal in legitimacy and rank.

Not only is equality the law, but the first wife has no recog-
nised superiority of position over the others in the Mormon
family. By custom she is always consulted by her husband in
reference to the choice of a new wife, while the other wives are
not always asked for their opinion ; but this is a matter of habit,
and the husband is in no way bound by her decision. Again,
the first wife — if she is a consenting party — often gives away
the fresh wives at the altar ; but this, too, is a mere custom.

CHAP. a.'J THE GAZETTE. 469

•

The fact that in India one of the wives generally occupies a
position of far higher dignity than that held by the others will
make Indian polygamy easy to destroy by the lapse of time and
operation of social and moral causes. As the city-dwelling
natives come to mix more with the Europeans, they will find that
only one of their wives will be generally recognised. This will
tend of itself to repress polygamy among the wealthy native
merchants and among the rajahs who are members of our
various councils, and their example will gradually react upon
the body of the natives. Already a majority of the married
people of India are monogamists by practice, although poly-
gamists in theory; their marriages being limited by poverty,
although not by law. The classes which have to be reached
are the noble families, the merchants, and the priests ; and over
the two former European influence is considerable, while the
inquiry into Koolinism has proved that the leading natives will
aid us in repressing the abuses of polygamy among the priests,

470 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. x.

CHAPTER X.

UMRITSUR.

AT Umbala, 1 heard that the pilgrims returning from the
sacred fair, or great Hindoo camp-meeting, at Hurdwar, had
been attacked by cholera, and excluded from the town ; and as
1 quitted Umbala in the evening, I came upon the cholera-
stricken train of pilgrims escaping by forced marches towards
their homes — in many cases a thousand miles away. Tall, lithe,
long-bearded men with large hooked noses, high foreheads, and
thin lips, stalked along, leading by one hand their veiled women,
who ran behind, their crimson and orange trousers stained with
the dust of travel, while bullock-carts decked out with jingling
bells bore the tired and the sick. Many children of all ages
were in the throng. For mile after mile I drove through their
ranks, as they marched with a strange kind of weary haste, with
few halts, with little rest, if any. One great camp we left behind
us, but only one ; and all night long we were still passing ranks
of marching men and women. The march was silent ; there
was none of the usual chatter of an Indian crowd ; gloom was
in every face, and the people strode along like a beaten army
flying from a destroying foe.

The disease, indeed, was pressing on their heels. Two hun-
dred men and women, as I was told at the Umbala lines, had
died among them in the single day. Many had dropped from
fright alone, but the pestilence was in the horde, and its seeds
were carried into whatever villages the pilgrims reached.

The gathering at Hurdwar had been attended by a million
people drawn from every part of the Punjaub and North-West :*

* Government returns have since shown that no less than ?,8#$,cwC)
people were present at the fair,

CHAP. X.] UMRTTSUR. 47,

not only Hindoos and Sikhs, but Scindhees, Beloochees,
Pathans, and Afghans had their representatives in this great
throng. As we neared the bridge of boats across the Sutlej, I
found that a hurried quarantine had been set up on the spot.
Only the sick or dying and bearers of corpses were detained,
however ; a few questions were asked of the remainder, and
ultimately they were allowed to cross : but driving on at speed,
I reached Jullundur in the morning, only to find that the pil-
grims had been denied admittance to the town. A camp had
been formed without the city, to which the pilgrims had to go,
unless they preferred to straggle on along the roads, dropping
and dying by the way ; and the villagers throughout the country
had risen on the wretched people, to prevent them returning to
their homes.

It is not strange that the Government of India should lately
have turned its attention to the regulation or suppression of
these fairs, for the city-dwelling people of North India will not
continue long to tolerate enormous gatherings at the com-
mencement of the hot weather, by which the lives of thousands
must ultimately be lost. At Hurdwar, at Juggernauth, and at
many other holy spots, hundreds of thousands — millions, not
infrequently — are collected yearly from all parts of India.
Great princes come down travelling slowly from their capitals
with trains of troops and followers so long that they often take
a day or more to pass a given spot. The Maharajah of Cash-
mere's camp between Kalka and Umbala occupied when I saw
it more space than that of Aldershot. Camels, women, suttlers
without count, foUow in the train, so that a body of five thousand
men is multiplied until it occupies the space and requires the
equipments of a vast army. A huge multitude of cultivators,
of princes, of fakeers, and of roisterers met for the excitement
and the pleasures of the camp, is gathered about the holy spot.
There is religion, and there is trade ; indeed, the religious pil-
grims are for the most part shrewd traders, bent on making a
good profit from their visit to the fair.

The gathering at Hurdwar in 1867 had been more than
usually well attended and successful, when suddenly a rumour
of cholera was heard ; the police procured the break-up of the
camp, and Government thought fit to prohibit the visit to Simla

473 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. x.

of the Maharajah of Cashmere. The pilgrims had hardly left
the camp upon their journey home when cholera broke out,
and by the time I passed them hundreds were already dead,
and a panic had spread through India. The cholera soon
followed the rumour, and reached even to the healthiest hill-
towns, and 6000 deaths occurred in the city of Srinuggur, after
the Maharajah's return with his infected escort from Hurdwar.
A Government which has checked infanticide and suppressed
suttee could not fail to succeed, if it interfered, in causing these
fairs to be held in the cold weather.

At Jullundur, I encountered a terrible dust-storm. It came
from the south and west, and, to judge from its fierceness, must
have been driven before the wind from the great sandy desert
of Northern Scinde. The sun was rising for a sultry day, when
from the south there came a blast which in a minute covered
the sky with a leaden cloud, while from the horizon there
advanced, more slowly, a lurid mass of reddish-brown. It soon
reached the city, and then, from the wall where I sought shelter,
nothing could be seen but driving sand of ochre colour, nothing
heard but the shrieking of the wind. The gale ceased as sud-
denly as it began, but left a day which, delightful to travellers
upon the Indian plains, would elsewhere have been called by
many a hard name — a day of lowering sky and dropping rain,
with chilling cold — in short, a day that felt and looked like an
English thaw, though the thermometer must have stood at 75°.
Another legacy from the storm was a view of the Himalayas
such as is seldom given to the dwellers on the plains. Looking
at the clouds upon the northern horizon, I suddenly caught
sight of the Snowy Range hanging, as it seemed, above them,
half-way up the skies. Seen with a foreground of dawk jungle
in bright bloom, the picture was beautiful, but the view too
distant to be grand, except through the ideas of immensity
called up by the loftiness of the peaks. While crossing the Beeas
(the ancient Hyphasis, and eastern boundary of the Persian
empire in the days of Darius), as I had crossed the Sutlej, by
a bridge of boats, I noticed that the railway viaduct, which was
being built for the future Umritsur and Delhi line, stood some
way from the deep water of the river ; indeed, stood chiefly
Upon dry land. The rivers change their course so often that

CHAP, x.] UMBITSUR. 475

the Beeas and Sutlej bridges will each have to be made a mile
long. There has lately been given us in the Punjaub a singular
instance of the blind confidence in which Government orders
are carried out by the subordinates. The order was that the
iron columns on which the Beeas bridge was to rest should
each be forty-five feet long. In placing them, in some cases
the bottom of the forty-five feet was in the shifting sand — in
others, it was thirty feet below the surface of the solid rock ;
but a boring which was needless in the one case and worse
than useless in the other has been persevered in to the end, the
story runs, because it was the " hook'm." The Indian rivers
are the great bars to road and railway making ; indeed, except
on the Grand Trunk road, it may be said that the rivers of
India are still unbridged. On the chief mail-roads stone cause-
ways are built across the river-beds, but the streams are all but
impassable during the rains. Even on the road from Kalka to
Umbala, however, there is one river-bed without a causeway,
across which the dawk-gharree is dragged by bullocks, who
struggle slowly through the sand ; and, in crossing it, I saw a
steam-engine lying half-buried in the drift.

In India, we have been sadly neglectful of the roads. The
Grand Trunk road and the few great railroads are the only
means of communication in the country. Even between the
terminus of the Bengal lines at Jubbelpore and of the Bombay
railroad at Nagpore there was at the time of my visit no
metalled road, although the distance was but 200 miles, and
the mails already passed that way. Half a day at least was
lost upon all the Calcutta letters, and Calcutta passengers for
Bombay or England were put to an additional expense of some
^30 and a loss of a week or ten days in time from the absence
of 200 miles of road. Until we have good cross-roads in India,
and metalled roads into the interior from every railway station,
we shall never succeed in increasing the trade of India, nor in
civilizing its inhabitants. The Grand Trunk road is, however,
the best in the world, and is formed of soft white nodules, found
in beds through North India, which when pounded and mixed
with water is known as "kunkur," and makes a road hard,
smooth, clean, and lasting, not unlike that which asphalt gives.

At Vrnritsijr, I first found myself in the true East — the East

474 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHiP. X.

of myrtles, roses, and veiled figures with flashing eyes — the
East of the " Arabian Nights " and " Lalla Rookh." The city
itself is Persian, rather than Indian, in its character, and is
overgrown with date-palms, pomegranates, and the roses from
which the precious attar is distilled. Umritsur has the making
of the attar for the world, and it is made from a rose which
blossoms only once a year. Ten tons of petals of the ordinary
< ountry rose (rosa centifolia) are used annually in attar-making
at Umritsur, and are worth from £20 to ^30 a ton in the raw
state. The petals are placed in the retort with a small quantity
of water, and heat is applied until the water is distilled through
a hollow bamboo into a second vessel, which contains sandal-
wood oil. A small quantity of pure attar passes with the water
into the receiver. The contents of the receiver are then poured
out, and allowed to stand till the attar rises to the surface, ii\
small globules, and is skimmed off. The pure attar sells for its
weight in silver.

Umritsur is famous for another kind of merchandise more
precious even than the attar. It is the seat of the Cashmere
shawl trade, though not of the actual manufacture of the best
shawls, and three great French firms have their houses in the
town, where, through the help of friends, shawls may be ob-
tained at singularly low prices ; but travellers in far-off regions
are often in the financial position of the Texan hunter who
was offered a million of acres for a pair of boots — they " have
not got the boots."

It is only shawls of the second class that can be bought
cheap at Umritsur ; those of the finest quality vary in price
from ^£40 to ^250, ^30 being the cost of the material. The
shawl manufacture of the Punjaub is not confined to Umntsur ;
there are 900 shawl-making shops in Loodiana, I was told
while there. There are more than sixty permanent dyes in use
at the Umritsur shawl-shops where the cheaper shawls are
made; cochineal, indigo, logwood, and saffron are the commonest
and best The shawls are made of the down which underlies
the hair of the " shawl-goat " of the higher levels. The yak,
the camel, and the dog of the Himalayas, all possess this down
as well as their hair or wool ; it serves them as a protection
against the winter cold, Chogas — long cloaks used as dressing.

CTIAP. x.] UMRITSUR. 475

gowns by Europeans — are also made in Umritsur, from the
soft wool of the Bokhara camel, for Umritsur is now the head-
quarters of the Central Asian trade with Hindostan.

The bazaar is the gayest and most bustling in India — the
goods of all India and Central Asia are there. Dacca muslin —
known as " woven air " — lies side by side with thick chogas of
kinkob and embroidered Cashmere, Indian towels of coarse
huckaback half cover Chinese watered silks, and the brilliant
dyes of the brocades of Central India are relieved by the
modest grays of the sohputioo caps. The buyers are as motley
as the goods — Rajpoots in turbans of deep blue, ornamented
with gold thread, Cashmere valley herdsmen in strange caps,
nautch girls from the first three bridges of Srinuggur, some of
the so-called " hill fanatics," whose only religion is to levy con-
tributions on the people of the plains, and Sikh troopers, home
on leave, stalking through the streets with a haughty swagger.
Some of the Sikhs wear the pointed helmets of their ancestors,
the ancient Sakae ; but whether he be helmeted or not, the
enormous white beard of the Sikh, the fierce curl of his
moustache, the cock of the turban, and the amplitude of his
sash, all suggest the fighting man. The strange closeness of
the likeness of the Hungarians to the Sikhs would lead those
who know not the origin of the former, to think that the races
are identical. Not only are they alike in build and warlike
habits, but they brush their beards in the same fashion, and
these little customs endure longer than manners — longer, often,
than religion itself. One of the crowd was a ruddy-faced, red-
bearded, Judas-haired fellow, that looked every inch a Fenian,
and might have stepped here from the Kilkenny wilds; but
many of the Sikhs had aquiline noses and fine features, so
completely Jewish of the best and oldest type, that I was re
minded of Sir William Jones's fanciful den/ation of the Afghan
races from the lost Ten Tribes of Israel. It may be doubted
whether the Sikhs, Afghans, ancient Assyrians, and Jews, were
not all originally of one stock

In India, dress still serves the purpose of denoting rank.
The peasant is clothed in cotton, the prince in cloth of gold ;
and even religion, caste, and occupation are distinguished by
their several well-known and. unchanging marks, Indeed, the

476 GREATER BRITAIN [c: AP. t*

fixity of faslvon is as singular in Hindostan as its infinite
changeableness in New York or France. The patterns we see
to-d?.y in the Bombay bazaar are those which were popular in
the days of Shah Jehan. This regulation of dress by custom is
one of the many difficulties in the way of our English manu-
facturers in their Indian ventures. There has been an attempt
made lately to bring about the commercial annexation of India
to England : Lancashire is to manufacture the longee, dhotee,
and saree, we are told ; Nottingham or Paisley are to produce
us shumlas; Dacca is to give way to Norwich, and Coventry to
supersede Jeypoor. It is strange that men of Indian knowledge
and experience should be found who fail to point out the
absurdity of our entertaining hopes of any great trade in this
direction. The Indian women of the humbler castes are the
only customers we can hope to have in India ; the high-caste
people wear only ornamented fabrics, in the making of which
native manufacturers have advantages which place them out of
the reach of European competition : cheap labour ; workmen
possessed of singular culture, and of a grace of expression
which makes their commonest productions poems in silk and
velvet ; perfect knowledge of their customers' wants and tastes;
scrupulous regard to caste conservatism — all these are possessed
by the Hindoo manufacturer, and absent in the case of the
firms of Manchester and Rochdale. As a rule, all Indian dress
is best made by hand ; only the coarsest and least ornamented
fabrics can be largely manufactured at paying rates in England.
As for the clothing of the poorer people, the men for the most
part wear nothing, the women little, and that little washed
often, and changed never. Even for the roughest goods we
cannot hope to undersell the native manufacturers by much in
the presidency towns. Up country, if we enter into the com-
petition, it can scarcely fail to be a losing one. England is not
more unlikely to be clothed from India, than India from Great
Britain. If European machinery is needed, it will be erected
in Yokohama, or in Bombay, not in the West Riding.

It is hardly to be believed that Englishmen have for some
years been attempting to induce the natives to adopt our flower
patterns — peonies, butterflies, and all. Ornament in India is
always subordinate to the purpose which the object has to

ClUf. ij tMklTStJti. 411

Easteni art begins where English ends. The principles which
centuries of study have given us as the maxims upon which the
grammar of ornament is based are those which are instinctive
in every native workman. Every costume, every vase, every
temple and bazaar in India, gives eye-witness that there is truth
in the saw that the finest taste is consistent with the deepest
slavery of body, with the utmost slavishness of mind. A
Hindoo of the lowest caste will spurn the gift of a turban or a
loin-cloth, the ornamentation of which consists not with his
idea of symmetry and grace. Nothing could induce a Hindoo
to clothe himself in such a gaudy masquerading dress as
maddens a Maori with delight and his friends with jealousy
and mortification. In art as in deportment, the Hindoo loves
harmony and quiet ; and dress with the Oriental is an art :
there is as much feeling— as deep poetry — in the curves of the
Hindoo Saree as in the outlines of the Taj.

Umritsur is the spiritual capital of the Sikhs, and the Durbar
•Temple in the centre of the town is the holiest of their shrines.
It stands, with the sunbeams glancing from its gilded roof, in
the middle of a very holy tank, filled with huge weird fish-
monsters that look as though they fed on men, and glare at you
through cruel eyes. The city itself has taken its name from the
sacred pond : Umritsur means " The pool of immortality."

Leaving your shoes outside the precincts of the tank, with
the police guard that we have stationed there, you skirt one
side of the water, and then leave the mosaic terrace for a still
more gorgeous causeway, that, bordered on either side by rows
of golden lamp-supporters, carries the path across towards the
rich pavilion, the walls of which are as thickly spread with gems
as are those of Akbar's palace. Here you are met by a bewil-
dering din, for under the inner dome sit worshippers by the
score, singing with vigour the grandest of barbaric airs to the
accompaniment of lyre, harp, and tomtom, while in the centre,
on a cushion, is a long-bearded grey old gooroo, or priest of the
Sikh religion — a creed singularly pure, though little known. The
effect of the scene is much enhanced by the beauty of the sur-
rounding houses, whose oriel windows overhang the tank, that the
Sikh princes may watch the evolutions of the lantern-bearing
boats on nights when the temple is illuminated. When seen by

478 GttEATEk BRITAlti.

moonlight, the tank is a very picture from the "Arabian
Nights'"

This is a time of ferment in the Sikh religion. A carpenter
named Ram Singh — a man with all that combination of shrewd-
ness and imagination, of enthusiasm and worldliness, by which
the world is governed — another Mohamed or Brigham Young,
perhaps — has preached his way through the Punjaub, infusing
his own energy into others, and has drawn away from the Sikh
Church some hundred thousand followers — reformers — who call
themselves the Kookas. These modern Anabaptists — for many
are disposed to look upon Ram Singh as another John of Ley-
den — bind themselves by some terrible and cecret oath, and the
Government fear that reformation of religion is to be accom-
panied by reformation of the State of a kind not advantageous
to the English power. When Ram Singh lately proclaimed his
intention of visiting the Durbar Temple, the gooroos incited
the Sikh fanatics to attack his men with clubs, and the military
police were forced to interfere. There is now, however, a
Kooka temple at Lahore.

In spite of religious ferment, there is little in the bazaar or
temples of Umritsur to remind one of the times — only some
twenty years ago — when the Sikh army crossed the Sutlej, and
its leaders threatened to sack Delhi and Calcutta, and drive the
English out of India ; it is impossible, however, to believe that
there is no undercurrent in existence. Eighteen years cannot
have sufficed to extinguish the Sikh nationality, and the men
who beat us at Chillianwallah are not yet dead, or even old.
When the Maharajah Dhuleep Singh returned from England in
1864 to bury his mother's body, the chiefs crowded round him
as he entered Lahore, and besought him to resume his position
at their head. His answer was a haughty " Jao !" (" Begone 1")
If the Sikhs are to rise once more, they will look elsewhere for
their leader.

CHAPTER XI.
LAHORE.

CROSSING in a railway journey of an hour one of the most
fertile districts of the Punjaub, I was struck with the resemblance
of the country to South Australia : in each great sweeps of
wheat-growing lands, with here and there an acacia or mimosa
tree ; in each a climate hot, but dry, and not unhealthy — singu-
larly hot here for a tract in the latitude of Vicksburg, near which
the Mississippi is sometimes frozen.

Through groves of a yellow-blossomed, sweet-scented, weep-
ing acacia, much like laburnum, in which the fortified railway
station seems out of place, I reached the tomb-surrounded
garden that is called Lahore — a city of pomegranates, olean-
ders, hollyhocks, and roses. The date-groves of Lahore are
beautiful beyond description ; especially so the one that hides
the Agra Bank.

Lahore matches Umritsur in the purity of its Orientalism,
Agra in the strength and grandeur of its walls : but it has no
Tank Temple and no Taj ; the Great Mosque is commonplace,
Runjeet Singh's tomb is tawdry, and the far-famed Shalimar
Gardens inferior to those of Pinjore. The strangest sight of
Lahore is its new railway station — a fortress of red brick, one
of many which are rising all over India. The fortification of
the railway stations is decidedly the next best step to that of
having no forts at all.

The city of Lahore is surrounded by a suburb of great tombs,
in which Europeans have in many cases taken up their residence
by permission of the owner, the mausoleums being, from the
thickness of their walls, as cool as cellars. Sometimes, how-
ever, a fanatical relative of the man buried in the tomb will
warn the European tenant that he will die within a year — a

4$6 OKEATER BRtTAtS.

prophecy which poison has once or twice brought to its fulfil-
ment in the neighbourhood of Lahore and at Moultan.

Strolling in the direction of the Cabool Gate, I came on the
Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjaub, driving in an open carriage
drawn by camels ; and passing out on to the plain, I met all
the officers in garrison returning on Persian ponies from a
game at the Afghan sport of " hockey upon horseback," * while
a little farther were some English ladies with hawks. Through-
out the Northern Punjaub a certain settling down in comfort
on the part of the English officials is to be remarked, and the
adaptations of native habits to English uses, of which I had in
one evening's walk the three examples which I have mentioned,
is a sign of a tendency towards that making the best of things
which in a newly-occupied country precedes the entrance upon
a system of permanent abode. Lahore has been a British city
for nineteen years, Bombay for two centuries and more; yet
Lahore is far more English than Bombay.

Although there are as yet no signs of English settlement in
the Punjaub, still the official community in many a Punjaub
station is fast becoming colonial in its type, and Indian tradi-
tions are losing ground. English wives and sisters abound in
Lahore, even the railway and canal officials having brought out
their families ; and during the cool weather race meetings, drag
hunts, cricket matches, and croquet parties follow one another
from day to day, and Lahore boasts a volunteer corps. When
the hot season comes on, those who can escape to the hills, and
the wives and children of those who cannot go, run to Dalhousie
as Londoners do to Eastbourne.

The healthy English tone of the European communities of
Umritsur and Lahore is reflected in the newspapers of the
Punjaub, which are the best in India, although the blunders of
the native printers render the " betting news " unintelligible,
aud the " cricket scores " obscure. The columns of the Lahore
papers present as singular a mixture of incongruous articles as
even the Government Gazette offers to its readers. An official
notice that it will be impossible to allow more than 560
elephants to take part in the Lucknow procession follows a
report of the " ice-meeting " of the community of Lahore, to
* Since naturalized in England under the name of " polo."

CHAP. 11.] LAZOSE. 431

arrange about the next supply ; and side by side with this is
an article on the Punjaub trade with Chinese Tartary, which
recommends the Government of India to conquer Afghanistan,
and to re-occupy the valley of Cashmere. A paragraph notices
the presentation of a valuable gift by the Punjaub Government
to a native gentleman, who has built a serai at his own cost ;
another records a brush with the Wagheers. The only police
case is the infliction on a sweeper of a fine of thirty rupees for
letting his donkey run against a high-caste woman, whereby she
was defiled ; but a European magistrate reprimands a native
pleader for appearing in court with his shoes on ; a notice from
the Lieutenant-Governor gives a list of the holidays to be
observed by the courts, in which the " Queen's Birthday " comes
between " Bhudur Kalee " and " Oors data Gunjbuksh," while
"Christmas" follows " Shubberat," and "Ash Wednesday"
precedes " Holee." As one of the holidays lasts a fortnight,
and many more than a week, the total number of dies non is
considerable ; but a postscript decrees that additional local
holidays shall be granted for fairs and festivals, and for the
solar and lunar eclipse, which brings the no-court days up to
sixty or seventy, besides those in the Long Vacation. The
Hindoos are in the happy position of having also six new-
year's days in every twelvemonth ; but the editor of one of the
Lahore papers says that his Mohamedan compositors manifest
a singular interest in Hindoo feasts, which shows a gratifying
spread of toleration ! An article on the " Queen's English in
Hindostan," in the Punjaub Times, gives, as a specimen of the
poetry of Young Bengal, a serenade in which "the skylark
carols on the primrose bush." " Emerge my love," the poet
cries :

" The fragrant, dewy grove
We'll wander through till gun-fire bids us part"

But the final stanza is the best :

" Then, Leila, come ! nor longer cogitate ;
Thy egress let no scruples dire retard ;
Contiguous to the portals of thy gate
Suspensivcly I supplicate regard."

The advertisements range from books on the languages of

2 I

481 GtlEATtiit BRITAIN. [OH Ah H.

Dardistan to Government contracts for elephant fodder, or
price-lists of English beer ; and an announcement of an Afghan
history in the Urdu tongue is followed by a prospectus of
Berkhampstead Grammar School. King Edward would rub his
eyes were he to wake and find himself being advertised in
Lahore.

The Punjaub Europeans, with their English newspapers and
English ways, are strange governors for an empire conquered
from the bravest of all Eastern races little more than eighteen
years ago. A Lahore civilian, taking up a town policeman's
staff, said to me one day, " Who could have thought in 1850
Uut in 1867 we should be ruling the Sikhs with this?"

CHAPTER XII.
OUR INDIAN ARMY.

DURING my slay in Lahore, a force of Sikhs and Pathans was
being raised for service at Hong Kong by an officer staying in
the same hotel with myself, and a large number of men were
being enlisted in the city by recruiting parties of the Bombay
army. In all parts of India, we are now relying, so far as our
native forces are concerned, upon the men who only a few
years back were by much our most dangerous foes.

Throughout the East, subjects concern themselves but little
in the quarrels of their princes, and the Sikhs are no exception
to the rule. They fought splendidly in the Persian ranks at
Marathon; under Shere Singh, they made their memorable
stand at Chillianwallah ; but, under Nicholson, they beat the
bravest of the Bengal sepoys before Delhi. Whether they fight
for us or against us is all one to them. They fight for those
who pay them, and have no politics beyond their pockets. So
far, they seem useful allies to us, who hold the purse of India.
Unable to trust Hindoos with arms, we can at least rule them
by the employment as soldiers of their fiercest enemies.

When we come to look carefully at our system, its morality is
hardly clear. As we administer the revenues of India, nominally
at les^t, for the benefit of the Indians, it might be argued that
we mr.y fairly keep on foot such troops as are best fitted to
secure her against attack ; but the argument breaks down when
it is remembered that 70,000 British troops * are maintained in
India from the Indian revenues for that purpose, and that local
order is secured by an ample force of military police. Even if
the employment of Sikhs in times of emergency may be
advisable, it cannot be denied that the day has gone by for
• Now 56,000,

a i a

484 GREATER BRITAIN, [CHAP, iff,

permanently overawing a people by means of standing armies
composed of their hereditary foes.

In discussing the question of the Indian armies, we have
carefully to distinguish between the theory and the practice.
The Indian official theory says that not only is the native army
a valuable auxiliary to the English army in India, but that its
moral effect on the people is of great benefit to us, inasmuch
as it raises their self-respect, and offers a career to men who
would otherwise be formidable enemies. The practice pro-
claims that the native troops are either dangerous or useless by
arming them with weapons as antiquated as the bow and arrow,
destroys the moral effect which might possibly be produced by
a Hindoo force by filling the native ranks with Sikh and
Goorkha aliens and heretics, and makes us enemies without
number by denying to natives that promotion which the theory
holds out to them. The existing system is officially defended
by the most contradictory arguments, and on the most shifting
of grounds. Those who ask why we should not trust the natives,
at all events to the extent of allowing Bengal and Bombay men
to serve, and to serve with arms that they can use, in bodies
which profess to be the Bengal and Bombay armies, but which
in fact are Sikh regiments which we are afraid to arm, are told
that the native army has mutinied times without end, that it has
never fought well except where, from the number of British
present, it had no choice but to fight, and that it is dangerous
and inefficient. Those who ask why this shadow of a native
army should be retained are told that its records of distinguished
service in old times are numerous and splendid. The huge
British force maintained in India, and the still huger native
army, are each of them made an excuse for the retention of
the other at the existing standard. If you say that it is evident
that 70,000 British troops cannot be needed in India, you are
told that they are required to keep the 120,000 native troops
in check. If you ask, Of what use, then, are the latter? you
hear that in the case of a serious imperial war the English
troops would be withdrawn, and the defence of India confided
to these very natives who in time of peace require to be thus
severely held in check. Such shallow arguments would be
instantly exposed were not English statesmen bribed by the
knowledge that their acceptance as good logic allows u> to

OHAP. xn.J OUR INDIAN ARMY. 485

maintain at India's cost 70,000 British soldiers, who in time of
danger would be available for our defence at home.

That the English force of 70,000 men maintained in India in
time of peace can be needed there, in peace or war, is not to be
supposed by those who remember that 10,000 men were all
that were really needed to suppress the wide-spread mutiny
of 1857, and that Russia — our only possible enemy from with-
out— never succeeded during a two years' war in her own
territory in placing a disposable army of 60,000 men in the
Crimea. Another mutiny such as that of 1857 is, indeed, im-
possible now that we retain both forts and artillery exclusively
in British hands ; and Russia having to bring her supplies and
men across almost boundless deserts, or through hostile
Afghanistan, would be met at the Khyber by our whole Indian
army, concentrated from the most distant stations at a few days'
notice, fighting in a well-known and friendly country, and
supplied from the plains of all India by the railroads. Our
English troops in India are sufficiently numerous, were it
necessary, to fight both the Russians and our native army ; but
it is absurd that we should maintain in India, in a time of
perfect peace, at a yearly cost to the people of that country of
from fourteen to sixteen millions sterling, an army fit to cope
with the most tremendous disasters that could overtake the
country, and at the same time unspeakably ridiculous that we
should in all our calculations be forced to set down the native
army as a cause of weakness. The native rulers, moreover,
whatever their unpopularity with their people, were always able
to array powerful levies against enemies from without ; and if
our government of India is not a miserable failure, our influence
over the lower classes of the people ought, at the least, to be
little inferior to that exercised by the Mogul emperors or the
Maratta chiefs.

As for local risings, concentration of our troops by means of
the railroads that would be constructed in half-a-dozen years
out of our military savings alone, and which American experience
shows us cannot be effectually destroyed, would be amply suf-
ficient to deal with them were the force reduced to 30,000 men ;
and a general rebellion of the people of India we have no reason
to expect, and no right to resist should it by any combination
gf circumstances be brought about

4»6 GEEA TER BRITAIN. FCIIAF. in.

The taxation required to maintain the present Indian army
presses severely upon what is in fact the poorest country in the
world ; the yearly drain of many thousand men weighs heavily
upon us ; and our system seems to proclaim to the world the
humiliating fa:t, that under British government, and in times of
peace, the most docile of all peoples need an army of 200,000
men, in addition to the military police, to watch them, or keep
them down.

Whatever the decision come to with regard to the details of
the changes to be made in the Indian army system, it is at least
clear that it will be expedient in us to reduce the English army
in India if we intend it for India's defence, and our duty to
abolish it if we intend it for our own. It is also evident that,
after allowing for mere police duties — which should in all cases
be performed by men equipped as, and called by the name of,
police — the native army should, whatever its size, be rendered
as effective as possible, by instruction in the use of the best
weapons of the age.* If local insurrections have unfortunately
to be quelled, they must be quelled by English troops ; and
against European invaders, native troops, to be of the slightest
service, must be armed as Europeans. As the possibility of
European invasion is remote, it would probably be advisable
that the native army should be gradually reduced until brought
to the point of merely supplying the body-guards and cere-
monial-troops; at all events, the practice of overawing Sikhs with
Hindoos, and Hindoos with Sikhs, should be abandoned as
inconsistent with the nature of our government in India, and
with the first principles of freedom.

There is, however, no reason why we should wholly deprive
ourselves of the services of the Indian warrior tribes. If we
are to continue to hold such outposts as Gibraltar, the duty of
defending them against all comers might not improperly be en-
trusted wholly or partly to the Sikhs or fiery little Goorkhas, on
the ground that, while almost as brave as European troops,
they are somewhat cheaper. It is possible, indeed, that, just
as we draw our Goorkhas from independent Nepaul, other
European nations may draw Sikhs from us. We are not even now
the only rulers who employ Sikhs in war ; the Khan of Kokand

* The Dutch in Java mix natives and Europeans in the same regiment^
iu the proportion pf tv/o natives to one European, with excellent resultSt

CHAP. xn. 4.87

is said to have man, , ^ .ay ruleo at home,

the Punjaubees may hot improbably become the Swiss of Asia.

Whatever the European force to be maintained in India, it is
clear that it should be local. The Queen's army system has now
had ten years' trial, and has failed in every point in which failure
was prophesied. The officers, hating India, and having no
knowledge of native languages or customs, bring our Govern-
ment into contempt among the people; recruits in England
dread enlistment for service they know not where ; and Indian
taxpayers complain that they are forced to support an army
over the disposition of which they have not the least control,
and which in time of need would probably be withdrawn from
India. Even the Dutch maintain a purely colonial force in
Java, and the French have pledged themselves that, when they
withdraw the Algerian local troops, they will replace them by
regiments of the line. England and Spain alone maintain purely
imperial troops at the expense of-their dependencies.

Were the European army in India kept separate from the
English service, it would be at once less costly and more
efficient, while the officers would be acquainted with the habits
of the natives and customs of the country, and not, as at present,
mere birds of passage, careless of offending native prejudice,
indifferent to the feelings of those among whom they have to
live, and occupied each day of their idle life in heartily wishing
themselves at home again. There are, indeed, to the existing
system drawbacks more serious than have been mentioned.
Sufficient stress has not hitherto been laid upon the demoraliza-
tion of our army, and danger to our home freedom that must
result from the keeping in India of half our regular force. It is
hard to believe that men who have periodically to go through
such scenes as those of 1857, or who are in daily contact with a
cringing dark-skinned race, can in the long run continue to be
firm friends to constitutional liberty at home ; and it should be
remembered that the English troops in India, though under the
orders of the Commander-in-Chief, are practically independent
of the House of Commons.

It is not only constitutionally that Indian rotation service it
bad. The system is destructive to the discipline of our troops,
and a separate service is the only remedy.*

* A long conversation with the Commander-in-Chief of the Dutch Army
Of India in 1875, has fully confirmed me in the view thus expressed in l86&

488 [CHAP, EH.

CHAPTER XIIL

RUSSIA.

FOR fifty years cr more, we have been warned that one day we
must encounter Russia, and for fifty years Muscovite armies,
conquering their way step by step, have been advancing south-
ward, till we find England and Russia now all but face to face
in Central Asia.

Steadily the Russians are advancing. Their circular of 1864,
in which they declared that they had reached their wished-for
frontier, has been altogether forgotten, and all Kokand, and
portions of Bokhara, have been swallowed up, while our spies
in St Petersburg tell the Indian Council that Persia herself is
doomed. Although, however, the distance of the Russian from
the English frontiers has been greatly reduced of late, it is still
far more considerable than is supposed. Instead of the Russian
outposts being 100 miles from Peshawur, as one alarmist has
said, they are still 400 ; and Samarcand, their nearest city, is
450 miles in a straight line over the summit of the Hindoo
Koosh, and 750 by road from our frontier at the Khyber. At
the same time, we must, in our calculations of the future, assume
that a few years will see Russia at the northern base of the
Hindoo Koosh, and in a position to overrun Persia, and take
Herat.

It has been proposed that we should declare to Russia our
intention to preserve Afghanistan as neutral ground ; but there
arises this difficulty, that having agreed to this plan, Russia
would immediately proceed to set about ruling Afghanistan
through Persia. On the other hand, it is impossible, as we

OIIAF. xiu.] ItUSSTA. 489

have already found, to treat * with Afghanistan, as there is no
Afghanistan with which to treat ; nor can we enter into friendly
relations with any Afghan chief, lest his neighbour and enemy
should hold us responsible for his acts. If we are to have any
dealings with the Afghans, we shall soon be forced to take a
side, and necessarily to fight and conquer, but at a great cost in
men and money. It might be possible to make friends of some
of the frontier tribes by giving them lands within our borders
on condition of their performing military service, and respecting
the lives and property of our merchants ; but the policy would
be costly, and its results uncertain, while we should probably
soon find ourselves embroiled in Afghan politics. Moreover,
meddling in Afghanistan, long since proved to be a foolish and
a dangerous course, can hardly be made a wise one by the fact
of the Russians being at the gate.

Many would have us advance to Herat, on the ground that
it is in Afghanistan, and not on the plains of India, that Russia
must be met ; but such is the fierceness of the Afghans, such
the poverty of their country, that its occupation would be at
once a source of weakness and a military trap to the invader.
Were we to occupy Herat, we should have Persians and Afghans
alike against us ; were the Russians to annex Afghanistan, they
could never descend into the plains of India without a little
diplomacy, or a little money from us, bringing the Afghan
fanatics upon their rear. When, indeed, we look carefully into
the meaning of those Anglo-Indians who would have us repeat
our attempt to thrash the Afghans into loving us, we find that
the pith of their complaint seems to be that battles and conquests
mean promotion, and that we have no one left in India upon
whom we can wage war. Civilians look for new appointments,
military men for employment, missionaries for fresh fields, and
all see their opening in annexation, while the newspapers echo
the cry of their readers, and call on the Viceroy to annex
Afghanistan " at the cost of impeachment."

Were our frontier at Peshawur a good one for defence, there
could be but little reason shown for an occupation of any part

* Since this time an Afghanistan has been crea'.ed by Shere AH, with
which we have treated, but it seems doubtful whether his successors will
be able to maintain their power.

49« GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. \\i\.

of Afghanistan ; but as it is, the question of the desirability of
an advance is complicated by the lamentable weakness of our
present frontier. Were Russia to move down upon India, we
should have to meet her either in Afghanistan or upon the Indus :
to meet her at Peshawur at the foot of the mountains and with
the Indus behind us, would be a military suicide. Of the two
courses that would be open to us, a retreat to the Indus would be
a terrible blow to the confidence of our troops, and an advance
to Cabool or Herat would be an advance out of reach of our
railroad communications, and through a dangerous defile. To
maintain our frontier force at Peshawur, as we now do, is to
maintain in a pestilential valley a force which, if attacked, could
not fight where it is stationed, but would '•be forced to advance
into Afghanistan or retreat to the Indus. The best policy would
probably be to withdraw the Europeans from Peshawur and
Rawul Piudee, and place them upon the Indus in the hills near
Attock, completing our railroad from Attock to Lahore and
from Attock to the hill station, and to leave the native force to
defend the Khyber and Peshawur against the mountain tribes.
We should also encourage European settlement in the valley of
Cashmere. On the other hand, we should push a short railroad
from the Indus to the Bholan Pass, and there concentrate a
second powerful European force, with a view to resisting invasion
at that point, and of taking in flank and rear any invader who
might advance upon the Khyber. The Bholan Pass is, moreover,
on the road to Candahar and Herat ; and, although it would be
a mistake to occupy those cities except by the wish of the
Afghans, still the advance of the Russians will probably one
day force the Afghans to ally themselves to us, and solicit the
occupation of their cities. The fact that the present ruler of
Herat is a mere tool of the Persians or ieu-datory of the Czar *
will have no effect whatever on his country, for if he once threw
himself openly into Russian hands, his people would immediately
desert him. So much for the means of defence against the
Russians ; but there is some chance that we may have to defend
India against another Mohamedan invasion, secretly counte-
nanced, but not openly aided by Russia. While on my way to

* At the time that "Greater Britain" first appeared, Shere Alj wa$
thought tQ be aJJ thJSi

ra\r. xiii.] RUSSIA. 4«>i

England, I had a conversation on this matter with a well-
informed Syrian Pacha, but notorious Russian-hater. He hai
been telling me that Russian policy had not changed, but was
now, as ever, a policy of gradual annexation ; that she envied
our position in India, and hated us because our gentle treatment
of Asiatics is continually held up to her as an example. " Russia
has attacked you twice in India, and will attack you there again,"
he said. Admitting her interference in the Afghan war, I denied
that it was proved that she had any influence in Hindostan, 01
any hand in the rebellion of 1857. My friend made me no
spoken answer, but took four caskets that stood upon the table,
and, setting them in a row, with an interval between them,
pushed the first so that it struck the second, the second the
third, and the third the fourth. Then, looking up, he said,
" There you have the manner of the Russian move on India. I
push No. i, but you see No. 4 moves, i influences 2, 2 influ-
ences 3, and 3 influences 4 ; but i doesn't influence 4. Oh,
dear me, no ! Very likely even i and 3 are enemies, and hate
each other; and if 3 thought that she was doing I's work, she
would kick over the traces at once. Nevertheless, she is doing
it. In 1857, Russia certainly struck at you through Egypt, and
probably through Central Asia also. Lord Palmerston was
afraid to send troops through Egypt, though, if that could have
been largely done, the mutiny could have been put down in
half the time, and with a quarter the cost ; and Nana Sahib, in
his proclamation, stated, not without reason, that Egypt was on
his side. The way you are being now attacked i-s this : — Russia
and Egypt are for the moment hand and glove, though their
ultimate objects are conflicting. Egypt is playing for the leader-
ship of all Islam, even of Moslems in Central Asia and India.
Russia sees that this game is for the time her game, as through
Egypt she can excite the Turcomans, Afghans, and other
Moslems of Central Asia to invade India in the name of religion
and the Prophet, but, in fact, in the hope of plunder, and can
also at the same time laise your Mohamedan population in
Hindostan — a population over which you have absolutely no
hold. Of course you will defeat these hordes whenever you
meet them in the field ; but their numbers are incalculable, and
their bravery great India has twice before been conquered

4Q3 GREATER BRIT AIM. [CHAP. xm.

from the north, from Central Asia, and you must remembei
that behind these hordes comes Russia herself. Mohamedanism
is weak here, on the Mediterranean, I grant you ; but it is very
strong in Central Asia — as strong as it ever was. Can you
trust your Sikhs, too ? I doubt it"

When I asked the Pacha how Egypt was to put herself at
the head of Islam, he answered : — " Thus. We Egyptians are
already supporting the Turkish empire. Oar tribute is a mil-
lion (francs), but we pay five millions, of which four go into
the Sultan's privy purse. We have all the leading men of
Turkey in our pay : 10,000 of the best troops serving in Crete,
and the whole of the fleet, are contributed by Egypt. Now,
Egypt had no small share in getting up the Cretan insurrection,
and yet, you see, she does, or pretends to do, her best to put it
down. The Sultan, therefore, is at the Viceroy's mercy, if you
don't interfere. No one else will if you do not. The Viceroy
aims at being nominally, as he is really, ' the Grand Turk.'
Once Sultan, with Crete and the other islands handed over to
Greece or Russia, the present Viceroy commands the allegiance
of every Moslem people — thirty millions of your Indian subjects
included ; that is. practically Russia commands that allegiance
— Russia practically, though not nominally, at Constantinople
wields the power of Islam, instead of being hated by every true
believer, as she would be if she annexed Turkey in Europe.
Her real game is a far grander one than that with which she is
credited." " Turkey is your vassal," the Pacha went on to say ;
"she owes her existence entirely to you. WThy not use her,
then ? Why not put pressure on the Sultan to exert his influ-
ence over the Asian tribes — which is far greater than you
believe — for your benefit ? Why not insist on your Euphrates
route? Why not insist on Egypt ceasing to intrigue against
you, and annex the country if she continues in her present
course ? If you wish to bring matters to a crisis, make Abdul
Aziz insist on Egypt being better governed, or on the slave-
trade being put down. You have made your name a laughing-
stock here. You let Egypt half bribe, half force Turkey into
throwing such obstacles in the way of your Euphrates route
that it is no nearer completion now than it ever was. You
force Egypt to pass a law abolishing the slave-trade and slavery

. int.;) ktrsstA. 4^

itself, and you have taken no notice of the fact that this law
has never been enforced in so much as a single instance. You
think that you ave all right now that you have managed to force
our Government into allowing your troops to pass to and fro
through Egypt, thus making your road through the territory of
your most dangerous enemy. Where would you be in case of
a war with Russia ? '

When I pleaded that, if we were refused passage, we should
occupy the country, the Pacha replied : " Of course you would;
but you need not imagine that you will ever be refused passage.
What will happen will be that, just at the time of your greatest
need, the floods will come down from the mountains, and wash
away ten miles of the line, and all the engines will go out of
repair. You will complain : we shall offer to lay the stick
about the feet of all the employes of the line. What more
would you have ? Can we prevent the floods ? When our
Government wished to keep your Euphrates scheme from
coming to anything, did they say : ' Do this thing, and we will
raise Islam against you ?' Oh no ! they just bribed your sur-
veyors to be attacked by the Bedouin, or they bribed a pacha
to tell you that the water was alkaline and poisonous for the
next hundred miles, and so on, till your company was ruined,
and the plan at an end for some years. Your Home Govern-
ment does not understand us Easterns. Why don't you put
your Eastern affairs into the hands of your Indian Government?
You have two' routes to India — Egypt and Euphrates valley,
and both are practically in the hands of your only great enemy
— Russia."

In all that my Syrian friend said of the danger of our relying
too much upon our route across Egypt, and on the importance
to us of the immediate construction of the Euphrates Valley
Railway line, there is nothing but truth, but, in his fears of a
fresh invasion of India by the Mohamedans, he forgot that for
fighting purposes the Mohamedans are no longer one, but two
peoples ; for the Moslem races are divided into Sonnites and
Shiites, or orthodox and dissenting Mohamedans, who hate
each other far more fiercely than they hate us. Our Indian
Moslems are chiefly orthodox, the Persians are dissenters, the
Turks are orthodox. If Egypt and Persia play Russia's game,

4W GRKAfEU

we may count upon the support of the Turks of Syria, of the
Euphrates valley, and of India. To unite Irish Catholics and
Orangemen in a religious crusade against the English would be
an easy task by the side of that of uniting Sonnite and Shiite
againsi India. Russia herself is not without her difficulties
with the strictest and most fanatical Mohamedans. Now that
she has conquered Bokhara, their most sacred land, they hate
her as fiercely as they hate us. The crescentade, if she pro-
vokes it, may be upon our side, and British commanders in
green turbans may yet summon the Faithful to arms, and invoke
the Prophet.

It is to be remarked that men who have lived long in India
think that our policy in the East has overwhelming claims on
the attention of our home authorities. Not only is Eastern
business to be performed, and Eastern intrigues watched care-
fully ; but, according to these Indian flies, who think that their
Eastern cart-wheel is the world, Oriental policy is to guide
home policy, to dictate our European friendships, to cause our
wars.

No Englishman in England can sympathise with the ridiculous
inability to comprehend our real position in India M'hich leads
many Anglo-Indians to cry out that we must go to war with
Russia to " keep up our prestige ;" and, on the other hand, it
need hardly be shown that, apart from the extension of trade
and the improvement of communication, we need not trouble
ourselves with alliances to strengthen us in the East. Supported
by the native population, we can maintain ourselves in India
against the world ; unsupported by it, our rule is morally indefen-
sible, and therefore not long to be retained by force of arms.

The natives of India watch with great interest the advance
of Russia ; not that they believe that they would be any better
off under her than under us, but that they would like, at all
events, to see some one thrash us, even if in the end they lost
by it ; just as a boy likes to see a new bully thrash his former
master, even though the later be also the severer tyrant.
That the great body of the people of India watch with feverish
excitement the advance of Russia is seen from the tone of the
native press, which is also of service to us in demonstrating
that the mass of the Hindoos are incapable of appreciating the

CHAP. Slit.] 1WSSIA. 495

benefits, and even of comprehending the character, of our rule.
They can understand the strength which a steady purpose
gives ; they cannot grasp the principles which lie at the root of
our half-mercantile, half-benevolent despotism.

No native believes that we shall permanently remain in
India ; no native really sympathised with us during the rebel-
lion. To the people of India we English are a mystery. We
profess to love them, and to be educating them for something
they cannot comprehend, which we call freedom and self-go-
vernment ; in the meantime, while we do not plunder them, nor
convert them forcibly, after the wont of the Mogul emperors,
we kick and cuff them all round, and degrade the nobles by
ameliorating the condition of humbler men.

No mere policy of disarmament or of oppression can be
worth much as a system for securing lasting peace ; for if our
Irish constabulary cannot prevent the introduction of Fenian
arms to Cork and Dublin, how doubly impossible must it be to
guard a frontier of five or six thousand miles by means of a
police force which itself cannot be trusted ? That prolonged
disarmament causes our subjects to forget the art of war is
scarcely true, and if true would tell both ways. The question
is not one of disarmament, and suppression of rebellion : it is
that of whether we can raise up in India a people that will
support our rule ; and if this is to be done, there must be an
end of cuffing.

Were the Hindoos as capable of appreciating the best points
of our government as they are of pointing out the worst, we
should have nothing to fear in comparison with Russia.
Were our rival that which she pretends to be,- -a civilized
European Power with a " mission " in the East ; were she even,
indeed, an enlightened commercial Power, with sufficiently
benevolent instincts but with no policy outside her pocket, such
as England was till lately in the East, and is still in the
Pacific, — we might find ourselves able to meet her with open
arms, and to bring ourselves to believe that her advance into
Southern Asia was a gain to mankind. As it is, the Russians
form a barbarous horde, ruled by a German emperor and a
German ministry, who, however, are as little able to suppress
degrading drunkenness and shameless venality as they are

4<,« G&EA'JTElt BRttAlSt. [ciul> xtrl

themselves desirous of promoting true enlightenment and
education. "Talk of Russian civilization of the East!" an
Egyptian once said to me : " Why, Russia is an organized
barbarism; why— the Russians are — why they are — why —
nearly as bad as we are ! " It should be remembered, too,
that Russia, being herself an Asiatic power, can never intro-
duce European civilization into Asia. All the cry of
" Russia ! Russia ! " all this magnifying of the Russian power,
only means that the English, being the strong men most
hated by the weak men of Southern Asia, the name of the next
strongest is used to terrify them. The offensive strength of
Russia has been grossly exaggerated by alarmists, who forget
that, if Russia is to be strong in Bokhara and Khiva, it will be
Bokharan and Khivan strength.* In all our arguments we
assume that with three-fourths of her power in Asia, and with
her armies composed of Asiatics, Russia will remain a European
Power. Whatever the composition of her forces, it may be
doubted whether India is not a stronger empire than her new
neighbour. The military expenditure of India is equal to that
of Russia; the homogeneousness of the Northern Power is at
the best inferior to that of India ; India has twice the popula-
tion of Russia, five times her trade, and as large a revenue.
To the miserable military administration of Russia, Afghanistan
would prove a second Caucasus, and by their conduct we see
that the Afghans themselves are not terrified by her advance.
The people with whom an Asiatic prince seeks alliances are
not those whom he most fears. That the Afghans are con-
tinually intriguing with Russia against us, merely means that
they fear us more than they fear Russia, f

Russia will one day find herself encountering the English or
Americans in China, perhaps, but not upon the plains of Hin-
dostan. Wherever and whenever the contest comes, it can
have but one result. Whether upon India or on England falls
the duty of defence, Russia must be beaten. A country that
was fifty years conquering the Caucasus, and that could never

* She has not yet largely employed natives, but she has only 23,000 men
in all her vast Central Asian dominions.

t The direction of their fears and of their intrigues has now been
changed.

CHAP, xin.] RUSSIA. v)7

place a field-force of 60,000 men in the Crimea, need give
no fear to India, while her grandest offensive efforts would be
ridiculed by America, or by the England of to-day. To meet
Russia in the way that we are asked to meet her means to
meet her by corruption, and a system of meddling Eastern
diplomacy is proposed to us which is revolting to our English
nature. Let us by all means go our own way, and let Russia
go hers. If we try to meet the Russian Orientals with craft,
we shall be defeated ; let us meet them, therefore, with straight-
forwardness and friendship, but if necessary, in arms.*

It is not Russia that we need dread, but, by the destruction
of the various nationalities in Hindostan by means of centra-
lization and of railroads, we have created an India which we
cannot fight. India herself, not Russia, is our danger, and our
task is rather to conciliate than to conquer.

* Five joumies to Russia since this chapter was written, have confirmed
me in the views I took when I wrote it.

2 1C

4Q8 GREATER BRITAIN. fcr.Ap. IIY,

CHAPTER XIV.

NATIVE STATES.

QUITTING Lahore at night, I travelled to Moultan by a railway
which has names for its stations such as India cannot match.
Chunga-Munga, Wanrasharam, Cheechavvutnee, and Chunnoo,
follow one another in that order. During the night, when I
looked out into the still moonlight, I saw only desert and
trains of laden camels pacing noiselessly over the waste sands ;
but in the morning I found that the whole country within eye-
shot was a howling wilderness. In every village, bagpipes
were playing through the live-long night. There are many
resemblances to the Gaelic races to be found in India; the
Hindoo girl's saree is the plaid of the Galway peasantress, or
of the Trongate fishwife ; the hill tribes wear the kilt ; but the
Punjaubee pipes are like those of the Italian pfiferari rather
than those of the Scotch Highlander.

The great sandy desert which lies between the Indus and
Rajpootana has, perhaps, a future under British rule. Wherever
snowy mountains are met with in warm countries, yearly floods,
the product of the thaws, sweep down the rivers that take their
rise in the glaciers of the chain, and the Indus is no exception
to the rule. Were the fall less great, the stream less swift,
Scinde would have been another Cambodia, another Egypt.
As it is, the fertilizing floods pour through the deep river bed
instead of covering the land, and the silt is wasted on the
Arabian Gulf. No native State with narrow boundaries can
deal with the great works required for irrigation on the scale
that can alone succeed; but, possessing as we do the country
from the defiles whence the five rivers escape into the plains to
the sandy bars at which they lose themselves in the Indian

CHAP. sir. J NATIVE STATES, 499

Seas, we might convert the Punjaub and Scinde into a garden
which should support a happy population of a hundred millions,
reared under our rule, and the best of bulwarks against invasion
from the north and west.

At Umritsur, I had seen those great canals that are com-
mencing to irrigate and fertilize the vast deserts that stretch to
Scinde. At Jullundur, I had already seen their handiwork in
the fields of cotton, tobacco, and wheat that blossom in the
middle of a wilderness ; and if the whole Punjaub and Indus
valley can be made what Jullundur is, no outlay can be too
costly a means to such an end. There can be no reason why,
with irrigation, the Indus valley should not become as fertile as
the valley of the Nile.

After admiring in Moultan the grandeur of the citadel, which
still shows signs of the terrible bombardment which it suffered
at our hands after the murder by the Sikhs of Mr. Van Agnew
in 1848, and the modesty of the sensitive mimosa which grows
plentifully about the city, I set off by railway for Sher Shah,
the point at which the railway comes to its end upon the banks
of the united Jhelum and Chenab, two of the rivers of the
Punjaub. The railway company once built a station on the
river-bank at Sher Shah, but the same summer, when the floods
came down, station and railway alike disappeared into the
Indus. Embanking the river is impossible, from the cost of
the works which would be needed; and building wing-dams
has been tried, with the remarkable effect of sending off the
river at right angles to the dam to devastate the country
opposite.

The railway has now no station at Sher Shah, but the
Indus-steamer captains pick out a good place to lie alongside
the bank, and the rails are so laid as to bring the trains along-
side the ships. After seeing nothing but flat plains from the
time of leaving Umritsur, I caught sight from Sher Shah of the
great Sooleiman chain of the Afghan mountains, rising in black
masses through the fiery mist that fills the Indus valley.

I had so timed my arrival on board the river-boat that she
sailed the next morning, and after a day's uneventful steaming,
varied by much running aground, when we anchored for the
night we were in the native State of Bhawulpore.

2 K 2

5oo GREATEH BRITAIN. [CTUP. xrr.

While we were wandering about the river shore in the
evening, I and my two or three European fellow-travellers, we
met a native, with whom one of our number got into conver-
sation. The Englishman had heard that Bhawulpore was to
be annexed, so he asked the native whether he was a British
subject, to which the answer was to the effect that he did not
know. " To whom do you pay your taxes ?" "To the Govern-
ment." "Which Government; the English Government or the
Bhawulpore Government?" His answer was that he did not
care so long as he had to pay them to somebody or other.

Little as our Bhawulpore friend knew or cared about the
colour of his rulers, he was nevertheless, according to our
Indian Government theories, one of the people who ought to
be most anxious for the advent of English rule. Such has been
the insecurity of life in Bhawulpore, that, of the six last viziers,
five have been murdered by order of the Khan, the last of all
having been strangled in 1862; and no native State has been
more notorious than Bhawulpore for the extravagance and gross
licentiousness of the reigning princes. The rulers of Bhawul-
pore, although nominally controlled by us, have hitherto been
absolute despots, and have frequently put to death their sub-
jects out of mere whimsy. For years the country has been
torn by ceaseless revolutions, to the ruin of the traders and the
demoralization of the people ; the taxes have been excessive,
peculation universal, and the army has lived at free quarters.
The Khans were for many years in such dread of attempts
upon their lives, that every dish for their table was tasted by
the cooks; the army was mutinous, all appointments bought
and sold, and the Khans being Mohamedans, no one need
pay a debt to a Hindoo.

Bhawulpore is no exceptional case ; everywhere we hear of
similar deeds being common ih native States. One of the
native rulers lately shot a man for killing a tiger that the rajah
had wounded ; another flogged a subject for defending his
wife ; abduction, adultery, and sale of wives are common among
them. Land is seized from its holders without compensation
being so much as offered to them ; extortion, torture, and
denial of justice are common, open venality prevails in all
ranks, and no native will take the pledged word of his king,

CH.U-. XIV.J NATIVE STATES. $dt

while the revenues, largely made up of forced loans, are wasted
on all that is most vile.

In a vast number of cases, the reigning families have de-
generated to such an extent, that the sceptre has come into
the hands of some mere driveller, whom, for the senselessness
of his rule, it has at last been necessary to depose. Those
who have made idiocy their study, know that in the majority of
cases the infirmity is the last stage of the declension of a race
worn out by hereditary perpetuation of luxury, vice, or disease
the effect of vice. Every ruling family in the East, save such
as slave-marriages have re-invigorated, is one of these run-
down and exhausted breeds. Not only unbounded tyranny
and extortion, but incredible venality and corruption, prevail
in the greater number of native States. The Rajah of Travan-
core, as it is said, lately requiring some small bungalow to be
added to a palace, a builder contracted to build it for 10,000 rs.
After a time, he came to apply to be let off, and on the Rajah
asking him the reason, he said : " Your highness, of the
10,000 rs., your prime minister will get 5000 rs., his secretary
1000 rs., the baboos in his office another 2000 rs., the ladies
of the zenana 1000 rs., and the commander of your forces
500 rs. ; now, the bungalow itself will cost 500 rs., so where
am I to make my profit ?" Corruption, however, pervades in
India all native institutions; it is not enough to show that
native States are subject to it, unless we can prove that it
is worse there than in our own dominions.

The question whether British or native rule be the least dis-
tasteful to the people of India is one upon which it is not easy
to decide. It is not to be expected that our Government
should be popular with the Rajpoot chiefs, or with the great
nobles of Oude, but it may fairly be contended that the mass
of the people live in more comfort, and, in spite of the Orissa
case, are less likely to starve, in English, than in native terri-
tory. No nation has at any time ever governed an alien
empire more wisely or justly than we the Punjaub. The men
who cry out against our rule are the nobles and the schemers
who, under it, are left without a hope. Our levelling rule does
not even, like other democracies, raise up a military chieftain-
ship Our native officers of the highest rank are paid and

50 j GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xiy.

treated much as are European sergeants, though in native
States they would of course be generals and princes.

Want of promotion for sepoys and educated native civilians,
and the degrading treatment of the high-caste people by the
English, were causes, among others, of the mutiny. The treat-
ment of the natives cannot easily be reformed ; if we punish or
discourage such behaviour in our officers, we cannot easily
reach the European planters and the railway officials, while
punishment itself would only make men treat the natives with
violence instead of mere disdain when out of sight of their
superiors. There is, however, reason to believe that in many
districts the people are not only well off under our Government,
but that they know it. During the native rule in Oude, the popu-
lation was diminished by a continual outpour of fugitives. The
British district of Mirzapore Chowhare, on the Oude frontiers,
had a rural population of over 1000 to each square mile — a
density entirely owing to the emigration of the natives from
their villages in Oude. Again, British Burmah is draining of
her people Upper Burmah, which remains under the old rulers ;
and throughout India the eye can distinguish British territories
from the native States by the look of prosperity which is borne
by all our villages.

The native merchants and townsfolk generally are our friends.
It is unfortunately the fact, however, that the cultivators of the
soil, who form three-fourths of the population of India, believe
themselves worse off under us than in the native States. They
say that they care not who rules so long as their holdings are
secured to them at a fixed rent, whereas under our system the
zemindars pay us a fixed rent, but in many districts exact what
they please from the competing peasants — a practice which,
under the native system, was prevented by custom. In all our
future land settlements, it is to be hoped that the agreement
will be made, not with middle-men, but directly with the people.

It is not difficult to lay down certain rules for our future
behaviour towards the native States. We already exercise over
the whole of them a control sufficient to secure ourselves
against attack in time of peace, but not sufficient to relieve us
from all fear of hostile action in time of internal revolt or
external war. It might be well that we should issue a pro-

CHAP, xiv.] NATIVE STATES. 503

clamation declaring that, for the future, we should invariably
recognise the practice of adoption of children by the native
rulers, as we have done in the case of the Mysore succession ;
but that, on the other hand, we should require the gradual dis-
bandment of all troops not needed for the preservation of
internal peace. We might well commence our action in this
matter by calling upon the native rulers to bind themselves by
treaty no longer to keep up artillery. In the event of an
invasion of Hindostan, a large portion of our European force
would be needed to overawe the native princes, and prevent
their marching upon our rear. It is impossible to believe that
the native States would ever be of assistance to us except in
cases where we could do without their help. During the
mutiny, the Nepaulese delayed their promised march to join
us until they were ceitain that we should beat the mutineers,
and this although the Nepaulese are among our surest friends.
After the mutiny, it came to light that Lucknow and Delhi —
then native capitals — had been centres of intrigue, although we
had " Residents " at each, and it is probable that Hyderabad
and Srinuggur are little less dangerous to us now than was
Delhi in 1857.

There is one native State, that of Cashmere and Jummoo,
which stands upon a very different footing to the rest. Created
by us as late as 1846, — when we sold this best of all the
provinces conquered by us from the Maharajahs of Lahore to a
Sikh traitor, Gholab Singh, an ex-farmer of taxes, for three-
quarters of a million sterling, which he embezzled from the
treasury of Lahore,— the State of Cashmere has been steadily
misgoverned for twenty years. Although our tributary, the
Maharajah of Cashmere forbids English travellers to enter his
dominions without leave (which is granted only to a fixed
number of persons every year), to employ more than a stated
number of servants, to travel except by certain passes for fear
of their meeting his wives, to buy provisions except of certain
persons, or to remain in the country after the ist November
under any circumstances whatever. He imprisons all native
Christians, prohibits the exportation of grain whenever there is
a scarcity in our territory, and takes every opportunity that falls
in his way of insulting our Government and its officials. Our

504 GREATER BRtTAW. fciUP. xrv

Central Asian trade has been all but entirely destroyed by the
duties levied by his officers, and Russia is the Maharajah's
chosen friend. The unhappy people of the Cashmere valley,
sold by us, without their consent or knowledge, to a family
which has never ceased to oppress them, petition us continually
for relief, and, by flocking into our Punjaub territory, give prac-
tical testimony to the wrongs they suffer.

In this case of Cashmere, there is ample ground for imme-
diate repurchase or annexation, if annexation it can be called to
remove or buy out a feudatory family which was unjustly raised
to power by us twenty-two years ago, and which has broken
every article of the agreement under which it was placed upon
the tributary throne. The only reason which has ever been
shown against the resumption by us of the government of the
Cashmere Valley is the strange argument that, by placing it in
the hands of a feudatory, we save the expense of defending the
frontier against the dangerous hill-tribes ; although the revenues
of the province, even were taxation much reduced, would amply
suffice to meet the cost of continual war, and although our
experience in Central India has shown that many hill-tribes
which will not submit to Hindoo rajahs become peaceable at
once upon our annexation of their country. Were Cashmere
independent and in the hands of its old rulers, there would be
ample ground for its annexation in the prohibition of trade, the
hindrance to the civilization of Central Asia, the gross oppres-
sion of the people, the existence of slavery, and the imprison-
ment of Christians; as it is, the non-annexation of the country
almost amounts to a crime against mankind.

Although the necessity of consolidation of our empire and
the progressive character of our rule are reasons for annexing
the whole of the native States, there are other and stronger
arguments in favour of leaving them as they are ; our policy
towards the Nizam must be regulated by the consideration that
he is now the head of the Moslem power in India, and that his
influence over the Indian Mohamedans may be made useful to
us in our dealings with that dangerous portion of our people.
Our military arrangements with the Nizam are, moreover, on
the best of footings. Scindia is our friend, and no bad ruler,
but some interference may be needed with the Guicowar of

out. xiv.] KAT1VE STATES. 505

Baroda * and with Holkar. Our policy towards Mysore is now
declared, and consists in respecting the native rule if the young
prince proves himself capable of good government, and we
might impose similar conditions upon the remaining princes,
and also suppress forced labour in their States as we have all
but suppressed suttee.

In dealing with the native princes, it is advisable that we
should remember that we are no interlopers of to-day coming
in to disturb families that have been for ages the rulers of the
land. Many of the greatest of the native families were set up
by ourselves ; and of the remainder, few, if any, have been in
possession of their countries so long as have the English of
Madras or Bombay.

The Guicowars of Baroda and the family of Holkar are
descended from cowherds, and that of Scindia from a peasant,
and none of them date back much more than a hundred years.
The family of the Nabobs of Arcot, founded by an adventurer,
is not more ancient, neither is that of Nizam : the great Hyder
AH was the son of a police-constable, and was unable to read
or write. The first Peishwar was a jeweller; the first King of
Oude a slave of the Mogul. While we should suspiciously
adhere to the treaties that we have made, we are bound, in the
interests of humanity, to intervene in all cases where it is
certain that the mass of the people would prefer our rule, and
where they are suffering under slavery or gross oppression.

Holkar has permitted us to make a railway across his ter-
ritory, but he levies such enormous duties upon goods in transit
as to cramp the development of trade in a considerable portion
of our dominions. Now, the fact that a happy combination of
circumstances enabled the cowherd, his ancestor, to seize upon
a certain piece of territory a hundred years ago, can have given
his descendants no prescriptive right to impede the civilization
of India ; all that we must aim at is to so improve our govern-
mental system as to make the natives themselves see that our
rule means the moral advancement of their country.

The best argument that can be made use of against our rule
is that its strength and minuteness enfeeble the native cha-
racter. When we annex a State, we put an end to promotion
alike in war and learning ; and under our rule, unless it change
* Since deposed*

506 GREATER BRITAIN. [CIUP. xiv.

alike in war and learning j and under our rule, unless it change
its character, enlightenment must decline in India, however
much material prosperity may increase.

Under our present system of exclusion of natives from the
Indian Civil Service, the more boys we educate, the more
vicious and discontented men we have beneath our rule. Were
we to throw it open to them, under a plan of competition which
would admit to the service even a small number of natives, we
should at least obtain a valuable body of friends in those
admitted, and should make the excluded feel that their exclu-
sion was in some measure their own fault. As it is, we not
only exclude natives from our own service, but even to some
extent from that of the native States, whose levies are often
drilled by English officers. The Guicowar of Baroda's service
is popular with Englishmen, as it has become a custom that
when he has a review he should present each of his officers
with a year's full pay.

Our plan of shutting out the natives from a'.l share in the
government not only makes our rule unpopular, but gives rise
to the strongest of all the arguments in favour cf the retention
of the existing native States, which is, that they offer a career
to shrewd and learned natives, who otherwise would spend
their leisure in devising plots against us. One of the ablest
men in India, Madhava Rao, now premier of Travancore, was
born in our territory, and was senior scholar of his year in the
Madras College. That such men as Madhava Rao and Salar
Jung should be unable to find suitable employment in our
service is one of the standing reproaches of our rule.

Could we but throw open our services to the natives, our ,
Government might, with advantage to civilization, be extended
over the whole of the native States ; for whether we are ever to
leave India or whether we are to remain there till the end of
time, there can be no doubt but that the course best adapted to
raise the moral condition of the natives is to mould Hindostan
into a homogeneous empire sufficiently strong to stand by itself
against all attacks from without, and internally governed by
natives, under a gradually weakened control from at home. If,
after careful trial, we find that we cannot educate the people to
become active supporters of our power, then it will be time to

CHAP, xiv.] XATWE STATES. $07

make use of the native princes and grandees ; but it is to be
hoped that the people, as they become well-taught, will also
become the mainstay of our democratic rule.

The present attitude of the mass of the people is one of
indifference and neutrality, which in itself lends a kind of
passive strength to our rule. During the mutiny of 1857, the
people neither aided nor opposed us ; and even had the whole
of the landowners been against us, as were those of Oude, it is
doubtful whether they could have raised their villagers and
peasants. Were our policemen relatively equal to their officers
and to the magistrates, we should never hear of native dis-
affection ; but we cannot count upon the attachment of the
people so long as it is possible for our constables to procure
confessions by the bribery of villagers, or the application of
pots full of wasps to their stomachs.

In the matter of the annexation of those native States which
still cumber the earth, we are not altogether free agents. We
swallow up States like Bhawulpore just as Russia consumes
Bokhara. Everywhere indeed, in Asia, strong countries must
inevitably devour their weaker neighbours. Failure of heirs,
broken treaties, irregular frontiers — all these are reasons or
assumed reasons for advance ; but the end is certain, and is
exemplified in the march of England from Calcutta to Peshawur
and of Russia from the Aral to Turkestan. Our experience in
the case of the Punjaub shows that even honest discourage-
ment of farther advances on the part of the rulers of the stronger
power will not always suffice to prevent annexation.

508 GREATER KRlTAIti. rotAP. XV

CHAPTER XV.

SCINDE.

NEAR Mithun Kote, we steamed suddenly into the main stream
of the Indus, the bed of which is here a mile and a quarter
wide. Although the river at the time of my visit was rising
fast, it was far from being at its greatest height. In January,
it brings down but forty thousand cubic feet of water every
second, but in August it pours down four hundred and fifty
thousand. The river-bed is rarely covered with running water,
but the stream cuts a channel for itself upon one shore, and
flows in a current of eight or nine miles an hour, while the
remainder of the bed is filled with half-liquid sand.

The navigation of the Indus is monotonous enough. Were
it not for the climate, the view would resemble that on the
Maas, near Rotterdam, though with alligators lining the banks
instead of logs from the Upper Meuse ; but climate affects
colour, and every country has tints of its own. California is
golden, New Zealand a black-green, Australia yellow, the Indus
valley is of a blazing red. Although every evening the Beloo-
chee mountains came in sight as the sun sank down behind
them, and revealed their shapes in shadow, all through the day
the landscape was one of endless flats and burning solitudes.
The river is a dirty flood, now swift, now sluggish, running
through a country in which sand deserts alternate only with
fields of stone. Villages upon the banks there are none, and
from town to town is a day's journey at the least. The only
life in the view is given by an occasional sail of gigantic size
and curious shape, belonging to some native craft or other on
her voyage from the Punjaub to Kurrachee. On our journey
down the Indus, we passed hundreds of ships, but met not one.

CHAP, xv.] 8CINDE. 509

They are built of timber, which is plentiful in the Himalayas,
upon the head waters of the river, and carry down to the sea
the produce of the Punjaub. The stream is so strong, that the
ships are broken up in Scinde, and the crews walk back 1000
miles along the bank. In building his ships upon the Hydaspes,
and sailing them down the Indus to its mouth, Alexander did
but follow the custom of the country. The natives, however,
break up their ships at Kotree, whereas the Macedonian en-
trusted his to Nearchus for the voyage to the Gulf of Persia,
and a survey of the coast.

Geographically, the Indus valley is but a portion of the Great
Sahara. Those who know the desert well, say that from Cape
Blanco to Khartoom, from Khartoom to Muscat, from Muscat
to Moultan, the desert is but one ; the same in the absence of
life ; the same great sea of sand. The valley of the Nile is but
an oasis, the Gulfs of Persia and of Aden are but trifling breaks
in its vast width. Rainless, swept by dry hot winds laden with
prickly sand, traversed everywhere by low ranges of red and
sunburnt rocks, strewn with jagged stones, and dotted here and
there with a patch of dates gathered about some ancient well,
such is the Sahara for a length of near six thousand miles.

Our days on board were all passed upon one plan. Each
morning we rose at dawn, which came about half-past four,
and, watching the starting of the ship from the bank where she
had been moored all night, we got a cool walk in our sleeping
clothes before we bathed and dressed. The heat then suffo-
cated us quietly till four, when we would reassert the majesty
of man by bathing, and attempting to walk or talk till dinner,
which was at five. At dark we anchored, and after watching
the water-turtles at their play, or hunting for the monstrous
water-lizards known as "gos," — apparently the ichneumons
called in Egypt "gots," — or sometimes fishing for great mud-
fish with wide mouths and powerful teeth, we would resume our
sleeping clothes (in which, but for the dignity of the Briton in
the eyes of the native crew, we should have dined and spent
the day). At half-past seven or eight, we lay down on deck,
and forgot our sorrows in sleep, or engaged in a frantic struggle
with the cockroaches. In the latter conflict we — in our dreams
at least — were not victorious, and once in an awful trance I

5*0 GREATER BRITAIX. [CHAP. xv.

believed myself carried off by one leg in the jaws of a gigantic
cockroach, and pushed with his feelers down his horrid hole.

Each hour passed on the Indus differs from the others only
in the greater or less portion of it which is devoted to getting
off the sand-banks. After steaming gallantly down a narrow
but deep and swift piece of the river, we would come to a spot
at which the flood would lose itself in crossing its bed from one
bank to the other. Backing the engines, but being whirled
along close to the steep bank by the remaining portion of the
current, we soon felt a shock, the recoil from which upset us,
chairs and all, it being noticeable that we always fell up stream,
and not with our heads in the direction in which the ship was
going. As soon as we were fairly stuck, the captain flew at the
pilot, and kicked him round the deck — a process always borne
with fortitude, although the pilot was changed every day. The
only pilot never kicked was one who came on board near Bhawul-
pore, and who carried a jewelled tulwar, or Afghan scimitar,
but even he was threatened. The kicking over, an entry of the
time of grounding was made by the captain in the pilot's book,
and the mate was ordered out in a boat to sound, while the
native soldiers on board the flats we were towing began quietly
to cook their dinner. The mate having found a sort of channel,
though sometimes it had a ridge across it over which the
steamer could not pass without touching, he returned for a
kedge, which he fixed in the sand, and we were soon warped
up to it by the use of the capstan, the native crew singing
merrily the while. Every now and then, however, we would
take the ground in the centre of the ship, and with deep water
all round, and then, instead of getting off, we for hours together
only pivoted round and round. One of the Indus boats, with
a line regiment on board, was once aground for a month near
Mithun Kote, to the entire destruction of all the wild boars in
the neighbourhood.

The kicking of the unfortunate pilots was not a pleasant
sight, but there were sometimes comic incidents attached to
our periodic groundings. Once I noticed that the five men
who were constantly sounding with coloured poles in different
parts of the ship and flats, had got into a monotonous chorus
of " panche e pot " (" five feet ") — we drawing only three,

CHAP, xv.] SCINDE. 511

ro that we went ahead confidently at full speed, when suddenly
we ran aground with a violent shock. On the re-sounding of
our course by the boat's crew, we found that our pole-men
must, for some time past, have been guessing the soundings to
save the trouble of looking. These fellows richly deserved a
kicking, but the pilots are innocent of any fault but inability to
keep pace with the rapid changes of the river-course.

Another curious scene took place one day when we were
steaming down a reach in which the river made many sudden
twists and turns. We had on board a merchant from the
Persian Gulf, a devout Mohamedan. In the afternoon, he
carried his praying-carpet on to the bridge between the paddle-
boxes, and there, turning to the west, commenced to pray.
The sun was on his left, but almost facing him ; in an instant,
round whirled the ship, making her course between two sand-
bars, and Mecca and the sun into the bargain were right
behind our worshipper. This was too much even for his devo-
tion, so, glancing at the new course, he turned his carpet, and,
looking in the fresh direction, recommenced his prayers. After
a minute or two, back went the ship, and we began again to
steer a southerly course. All this time the Persian kept his
look of complete abstraction, and remained unshaken through
all his difficulties. This seriousness in face of events which
would force into shouts of laughter any European congregation
is a characteristic of a native. It is strange that Englishmen
are nowhere so easily provoked to loud laughter as in a church
or college chapel, natives at no time so insusceptible of ridicule
as when engaged upon the services of their religions.

The shallowness of the Indus, its impracticability for steam-
ships during some months of the year, and the many windings
of the stream — all these things make it improbable that the
river will ever be largely available for purposes of trade ; at the
same time, the Indus valley must necessarily be the line taken
by the commerce of the Punjaub, and eventually by that of
some portions of Central Asia, and even of Southern China.
Whether Kurrachee becomes our great Indian port, or whether
our railway be made through Beloochistan, a safe and speedy
road up the Indus valley for troops and trade is needed.

II we take into consideration the size of India, the amount

513 GREATER BRITAIN. \cn\v. *».

of its revenues, and the length of time during which we have
occupied that portion of its extent which we at present hold, it
is impossible to avoid the conclusion that not even in Australia
have railways been more completely neglected than they have
been in India. We have opened but 4000 miles, or one mile
for every 45,000 people. Nothing has been touched as yet but
the Grand Trunk and great military and postal routes, and
even these are little more than half completed. Even the
Bombay and Calcutta mail line and the Calcutta and Lahore
lines are hardly finished ; the Peshawur line and the Indus
road not yet begun. While at home people believe that the
Euphrates Valley Railway is under consideration, they will find,
if they come out to India, that to reach Peshawur in 34° N.
latitude, they must go to Bombay in 18°, if not to Galle in 6°.
Even if they reach Kurrachee, they will find it a month's
journey to Peshawur. While we are trying to tempt the wool
and shawls of Central Asia down to Umritsur and Lahore, the
goods with which we would buy these things are sent round by
the Cape of Good Hope and Calcutta.

It is true that the Indus line will be no easy one to make,
To bridge the river at Mithun Kote or even at Kotree would
be difficult enough, and were it to be bridged at Sukkur, where
there is rock, and a narrow pass upon the river, the line from
Sukkur to Kurrachee would be exposed to depredation from
the frontier tribes. The difficulties are great, but the need is
greater, and the argument of the heavy cost of river-side rail-
roads should not weigh with us in the case of lines required for
the safety of the country. The Lahore and Peshawur, the
Kotree and Moultan, the Kotree and Baroda, and the Baroda
and Delhi lines, instead of being set one against the other for
comparison, should be simultaneously completed as necessary
for the defence of the empire, and as forming the trunk lines
for innumerable branches into the cotton and wheat-growing
districts.

One of the branches of the Indus line will have to be con-
structed from the Bholan Pass to Sukkur, where we lay some
days embarking cotton. Sukkur lies on the Beloochistan side ;
Roree fort — known as the " Key of Scinde," the seizure of which
by us provoked the great war with the Ameers — on an island in

CHAP, xvj SCINDE. 5'3

mid-stream ; and Bukkur city on the eastern or left bank, and
the river, here narrowed to a width of a quarter of a mile, runs
with the violence of a mountain torrent.

Sukkur is one of the most ancient of Indian cities, and was
mentioned as time-worn by the Greek geographers, while tra-
dition says that its antiquities attracted Alexander ; but towns
grow old with great rapidity in India, and, once ancient in their
look, never to the eye become in the slightest degree older.

In Sukkur I first saw the Scindee cap, which may be described
as a tall hat with the brim atop, but the Scindees were not the
only strangely-dressed traders in Sukkur and Roree : there were
high-capped Persians, and lean Afghans with long gaunt faces
and high cheek-bones, and furred merchants from Central Asia.
It is even said that goods find their way overland from China to
Sukkur, through Eastern Persia and Beloochistan, the traders
preferring to come round four thousand miles than to cross the
main chain of the Himalayas, or pass through the country of the
Afghans.

In ancient times there was considerable intercourse between
China and Hindostan ; at the end of the seventh century, indeed,
the Chinese invaded India through Nepaul, and captured five
hundred cities. It is to be hoped that the next few years may
see a railway built from Rangoon to Southern China, and from
Calcutta to the Yang-tse-Kiang, a river upon which there are
ample stores of coal, which would supply the manufacturing
wants of India.

After viewing from a lofty tower the flat country in the direc-
tion of Shikapore, we spent one of our Sukkur evenings upon
the island of Roree watching the natives fishing. Casting them-
selves into the river on the top of skins full of air, or more com-
monly on great earthenware pitchers, they floated at a rapid
pace down with the whirling stream, pushing before them a
sunken net which they could close and lift by the drawing of a
string. About twice a minute they would strike a fish, and,
lifting their head, would impale the captive on a stick slung
behind their back, and at once lower again the net in readiness
for further action.

Sukkur, like seven other places tnat I had visited within a
year, has the reputation of being the hottest city in the world,

2 L

5 14 GREATER BRITAIN, [CHAP. x*.

and the joke on the boats of the Indus flotilla is that Moultan
is too hot to bear, and Sukkur much hotter ; but that Jacobabad.
on the Beloochee frontier, near Sukkur, is so hot that the people
come down thence to Sukkur for the hot season, and find its
coolness as refreshing as ordinary mortals do that of Simla.
Hot as is Sukkur, it is fairly beaten by a spot at the foot of the
Ibex Hills, near Sehwan. I was sleeping on the bridge with an
officer from Peshawur, when the crew were preparing to put off
from the bank for the day's journey. We were awakened by
the noise, but, as we sat up and rubbed our eyes, a blast of hot
wind came down from the burnt-up hills, laden with fine sand,
and of such a character that I got a lantern — for it was not
fully light — and made my way to the deck thermometer. I
found it standing at 104°, although the hour was 4.15 A.M.
At breakfast time it had fallen to 100°, from which it slowly
rose, until at i P.M. it registered 116° in the shade. The next
night it never fell below 100°. This was the highest tempera-
ture I experienced in India during the hot weather, and it was,
singularly enough, the same as the highest which I recorded in
Australia. No part of the course of the Indus is within the
tropics, but it is not in the tropics that the days are hottest,
although the nights are generally unbearable on sea-level near
the equator.

At fcotree, near Hydrabad, the capital of Scinde, we left the
Indus for the railway, and, after a night's journey, found our-
selves upon the sea-shore at Kurrachee,

CHAPTER XVI.
OVERLAND ROUTES.

OF all the towns in India, Kurrachee is the least Indian. With
its strong south-westerly breeze, its open sea and dancing \* aves,
it is to one coming from the Indus valley a pleasant place
enough ; and the climate is as good as that of Alexandria',
though there is at Kurrachee all the dtost of Cairo. For a
stranger detained against his will to find Kurrachee bearable
there must be something refreshing in its breezes : the town
stands on a treeless plain, and of sights there are none, unless
it be the sacred alligators at Muggur Peer, where the tame
" man-eaters " spring at a goat for the visitor's amusement as
freely as the Wolfsbrunnen trout jump at the gudgeom

There is no reason given why the alligators' pool should be
reputed hdly, but in India places easily acquire sacred fame.
About Peshawur there dwell many hill-fanatics, whose sole
religion appears to consist in stalking British sentries. So
many of them have been locked up in the Peshawur gaol that
it has become a holy place, and men are said to steal and riot
in the streets of the bazaar in order that they may be consigned
to this sacred temple.

The nights were noisy in Kurrachee, for the great Mohame-
dan feast of the Mohumim had commenced, and my bungalow
was close to the lines of the police, who are mostly Belooch
Mohamedans. Every evening at dusk, fires were lighted in the
police-lines and the bazaar, and then the tomtom-ing gradually
increased from the gentle drone of the daytime until a perfect
storm of " tom-a-tom, tomtom, tom-a-tom, tomtom," burst from
all quarters of the town, and continued the whole night long,
relieved only by blasts from conch-shells and shouts of " Shah

2 L 2

516 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP, xvi

Hassan ! Shah Hoosein ! Wah Allah ! Wah Allah !" as the per-
formers danced round the flames. I heartily wished myself in
the State of Bhawulpore, where there is a licence-tax on the
beating of drums at feasts. The first night of the festival I
called up a native servant who " spoke English," to make him
take me to the fires and explain the matter. His only explana-
tion was a continual repetition of " Dat Mohurrum, Mohamedan
Christmas-day." When each night, about dawn, the tomtom-ing
died away once more, the chokedars — or night watchmen — woke
up from their sound sleep, and began to shout " Ha ha !" into
every room to show that they were awake.

The chokedars are well-known characters in every Indian
station : always either sleepy and useless, or else in league with
the thieves, they are nevertheless a recognised class, and are
everywhere employed. At Rawul-Pindee and Peshawur, the
chokedars are armed with guns, and it is said that a newly-
arrived English officer at the former place was lately returning
from a dinner-party, when he was challenged by the chokedar
of the first house he had to pass. Not knowing what reply to
make, he took to his heels, when the chokedar fired at him as
he ran. The shot woke all the chokedars of the parade, and
the unfortunate officer received the fire of every man as he
passed along to his house at the farther end of the lines, which
he reached, however, in perfect safety. It has been suggested
that, for the purpose of excluding all natives from the lines at
night, there should be a shibboleth or standing parole of some
word which no native can pronounce. The word suggested is
" Shoeburyness."

Although chokedars were silent and tomtom-ing subdued
during the daytime, there were plenty of other sounds. Lizards
chirped from the walls of my room, and sparrows twittered from
every beam and rafter of the roof. When I told a Kurrachee
friend that my slippers, brushes, and soldier's writing-case had
all been thrown by me on to the chief beam during an unsuc-
cessful attempt to dislodge the enemy, he replied that for his
part he paraded his drawing-room every morning with a double-
barrelled gun, and frequently fired into the rafters, to the horror
of his wife.

In a small lateen-rigged yacht lent us by a fellow-traveller

CHAJ-. TVI.J OVERLAND ROUTES. 517

from Moultan, some of us visited the works which have long
been in progress for the improvement of the harbour of Kurra-
chee, and which form the sole topic of conversation among the
residents in the town. The works have for object the removal
of the bar which obstructs the entrance to the harbour, with a
view to permit the entry of larger ships than can at present find
an anchorage at Kurrachee.

The most serious question under discussion is that of whether
the bar is formed by the Indus silt or merely by local causes,
as, if the former supposition is correct, the ultimate disposition
of the ten thousand millions of cubic feet of mud which the
Indus annually brings down is not likely to be affected by such
works as those in progress at Kurrachee. When a thousand
sealed bottles were lately thrown into the Indus for it to be seen
whether they would reach the bar, the result of the "great bottle
trick," as Kurrachee people called it, was that only one bottle
reached, and not one weathered, a point six miles to the south-
ward of the harbour. The bar is improving every year, and has
now some twenty feet of water, so that ships of 1000 tons can
enter except in the monsoon, and the general belief of engineers
is that the completion of the present works will materially in-
crease the depth of water.

The question of this bar is not cne of merely local interest :
a single glance at the map is sufficient to show the importance
of Kurrachee. Already rising at an unprecedented pace, having
trebled her shipping and quadrupled her trade in ten years, she
is destined to make still greater strides as soon as the Indus
Railway is completed ; and finally — when the Persian Gulf
route becomes a fact — to be the greatest of the ports of India.

That a railway must one day be completed from Constanti-
nople or from some port on the Mediterranean to Bussorah on
the Persian Gulf is a point which scarcely admits of doubt.
From Kurrachee or Bombay to London by the Euphrates valley
and Constantinople is all but a straight line, while from Bombay
to London by Aden and Alexandria is a wasteful curve. The
so-called " Overland Route " is half as long again as would be
the direct line. The Red Sea and Isthmus route has neither
the advantage of unbroken sea nor of unbroken land transit ;
the direct route with a bridge near Constantinople might be

5i8 GREATER BRITAIN. [CIIAI-. xvt

extended into a land road from India to Calais or Rotterdam.
The Red Sea line passes along the shores of Arabia, where
there is comparatively little local trade ; the Persian Gulf route
would develop the remarkable wealth of Persia, and would carry
to Europe a local commerce already great. At the entrance of
the Persian Gulf, near Cape Mussendoom or Ormuz, we should
establish a free port on the plan of Singapore. In 1000 A.D.,
the spot now known as Ormuz was a barren rock, but a few
years of permanent occupation of the spot as a free port changed
the barren islet into one of the wealthiest cities in the world.
The Red Sea route crosses Egypt, the direct route crosses
Turkey ; and it cannot be too strongly urged that in war time
" Egypt " means Russia or France, while " Turkey " means Great
Britain.

In any scheme of a Constantinople and Gulf railroad, Kurra-
chee would play a leading part. Not only the wheat and the
cotton of the Punjaub and of the then irrigated Scinde, but the
trade of Central Asia would flow down the Indus, and it is hardly
too much to believe that the silks of China, the teas of Northern
India, and the shawls of Cashmere will all of them one day find
in Kurrachee their chief port. The earliest known overland
route was that by the Persian Gulf. Chinese ships traded to
Ormuz in the fifth and seventh centuries, bringing silk and iron ;
and it may be doubted whether any of the Russian routes will
be able to compete with the more ancient Euphrates valley line
of trade. Shorter, passing through countries well known and
comparatively civilized, admitting at once of the use of land and
water transport side by side, it is far superior in commercial
and political advantages to any of the Russian desert roads. A
route through Upper Persia has been proposed, but merchants
of experience will tell you that greater facilities for trade are
extended to Europeans in even the "closed" ports of China
than upon the coasts of Persia, and the prospects of the freedom
of trade upon a Persian railroad would be but a bad one, it may
be feared.

The return of trade to the Gulf route will revive the glory of
many fallen cities of the Middle Ages. Ormuz and Antioch,
Cyprus and Rhodes, have a second history before them ; Crete,
Brindisi, and Venice will each obtain a renewal of their ancient

CHAP, xvi.] OVERLAND ROUTES 519

fame. Alexander of Macedon was the first man who took a
scientific view of the importance of the Gulf route ; but we have
hitherto drawn but little profit from the lesson contained in his
commission to Nearchus to survey the coast from the Indus to
the Euphrates. The advantage to be gained from the completion
of the railway from Constantinople to the Persian Gulf will not
fall only to the share of India and Great Britain. Holland and
Belgium are, in proportion to their wealth, at the least as greatly
interested in the Euphrates route as are we ourselves, and should
join us in its construction. The Dutch trade with Java would
be largely benefited, and Dutch ports would become the ship
ping-places for Eastern merchandise on its way to England ana
north-east America, while, to the cheap manufactures of Liege,
India, China, and Central Asia would afford the best of markets.
If the line were a double one, to the west and north of Aleppo,
one branch running to Constantinople and the other to the
Mediterranean at Scanderoon, the whole of Europe would
benefit by the Persian trade, and, in gaining the Persian trade,
would gain also the power of protecting Persia against Russia,
and of thus preventing the dominance of a crushing despotism
throughout the Eastern world. In a thousand ways, however,
the advantages of the line to all Europe are so plainly manifest,
that the only question worth discussing is the nature of the
difficulties that hinder its completion.

The difficulties in the way of the Gulf route are political and
financial, and both have been exaggerated without limit. The
project for a railway from Constantinople to the Persian Gulf
has been compared to that for the construction of a railroad
from the Missouri to the Pacific. In 1858, the American line
was looked on as a mere speculator's dream, while the Euphrates
Railway was to be commenced at once ; ten years have passed,
and the Pacific Railway is a fact, while the Indian line has been
forgotten.

It is not that the making of the Euphrates line is a more
difficult matter than that of crossing the Plains and Rocky
Mountains. The distance from St Louis to San Francisco is
1600 miles, that from Constantinople to Bussorah is but noo
miles; or from Scanderoon to Bussorah only 700 miles.
From London to the Persian Gulf is not so far as from New

520 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP, xvt,

York to San Francisco. The American line had to cross two
great snowy chains and a waterless tract of considerable width :
the Indian route crosses no passes so lofty as those of the Rocky
Mountains or so difficult as those of the Sierra Nevada, and is
well watered in its whole length. On the American line there
is little coal, while the Euphrates route would be plenti-
fully supplied with coal from the neighbourhood of Bagdad.
When the American line was commenced, the proposed track
lay across unknown wilds : the Constantinople and Persian
Gulf roule passes through venerable towns, the most ancient of
all the cities of the world, and the route itself is the oldest
known highway of trade. The chief of all the advantages pos-
sessed by the Indian line which is wanting in America is the
presence of ample labour on all parts of the road. Steamers
are already running from Bombay and Kurrachee to the Persian
Gulf ; others on the Tigris, and a portion of the Euphrates ;
there is a much used road from Bagdad to Aleppo ; and a Turkish
military road from Aleppo to Constantinople, to which city a
direct railroad will soon be opened ; and a telegraph line
belonging to an English company already crosses Asian Turkey
from end to end. Notwithstanding the facilities, the Euphrates
Railway is still a project, while the Atlantic and Pacific line will
be opened in 1870.

Were the financial difficulties those which the supporters of
the line have in reality to meet, it might be urged that there
will be a great local traffic between Bussorah, Bagdad, and
Aleppo, and from all these cities to the sea, and that the Govern-
ment mail subsidies will be huge, and the Indian trade, even in
the worst of years, considerable. Were the indifference of
Belgium, Germany, and Holland such that they should refuse
to contribute towards the cost of the line, its importance would
amply warrant a moderate addition to the debt of India.

The real difficulties that have to be encountered are political
rather than financial ; the covert opposition of France and
Egypt is not less powerful for evil than is the open hostility of
Russia. Happily for India, however, the territories of our ally
Turkey extend to the Persian Gulf, for it must be remembered
that for railway purposes Turkish rule, if we so please, is equiva-
lent to English rule. As it happens, no active measures are

CHAP. XVI.] OVERLAND ROUTES. 521

needed to advance our line, but, were it otherwise, such inter-
vention as might be necessary to secure the safety of the great
highway for Eastern trade with Europe would be defensille
were it exerted towards a purely independent Government.

The pressure to be put upon the Ottoman Porte must be
direct and governmental. For a private company to conduct
a great enterprise to a successful conclusion in Eastern countries
is always difficult ; but when the matter is political in its nature,
or, if commercial, at least hindered on political grounds, a
private company is powerless. It is, moreover, the practice of
Eastern Governments to grant concessions of important works
which they cannot openly oppose, but which in truth they wish
to hinder, to companies so formed as to be incapable of pro-
ceeding with the undertaking. When others apply, the Govern-
ment answers them that nothing further can be done : " the
concession is already granted."

Whatever steps are taken, a bold front is needed. It might
even be advisable that we should declare that the Euphrates
Valley Railway through the Turkish territory from Constanti-
nople and Scanderoon through Aleppo to Bagdad and Bussorah,
and sufficient military posts to ensure its security in time of
war, are necessary to our tenure of India, and that we should
call upon Turkey to grant us permission to commence our work,
on pain of the withdrawal of our protection.

Our general principle of non-interference is always liable to
be set aside on proof of the existence of a higher necessity for
intervention than for adherence to our golden rule, and it may
be contended that sufficient proof has been shown in the present
instance. Whether public action is to be taken, or the matter
to be left to private enterprise, it is hard to resist the conclusion
that the Direct Route to India is one of the most pressing of
the questions of the day.

When, in company with my fellow-passengers from Moultan,
I left Kurrachee for Bombay, we had on board the then Com-
missioner of Scinde, who was on his way to take his seat as a
member of Council at Bombay. A number of the leading men
of Scinde came on board to bid farewell to him before he sailed
and among them the royal brothers who, but for our annexation
of the country, would be the reigning Ameers at this moment.

52J GREATER BRTTAIS. [CIIAF. xri.

Nothing that I had seen in India, even at Umritsur, surpassed
in glittering pomp the caps and baldricks of these Scindee chief-
tains ; neither could anything be stranger than their dress. One
had on a silk coat of pale green shot with yellow, satin trousers,
and velvet slippers with curled peaks ; another wore a jacket of
dark amber with flowers in white lace. A third was clothed in
a cloth of crimson striped with amber ; and the Ameer himself
was wearing a tunic of scarlet silk and gold, and a scarf of
purple gauze. All wore the strange-shaped Scindian hat ; all
had jewelled dirks, with curiously-wrought scabbards to hold
their swords, and gorgeously-embroidered baldricks to support
them. The sight, however, of no number of sapphires, tur-
quoises, and gold clothes could have reconciled me to a longer
detention in Kurrachee ; so I rejoiced when our bespangled
friends disappeared over the ship's side to the sound of the
Lascars' anchor-tripping chorus, and left the deck to the
" Proconsul " and ourselves.

CHAPTER XVII.
BOMBAY.

CROSSING the mouths of the Gulfs of Cutch and Cambay, we
reached Bombay in little more than two days from Kurrachee ;
but as we rounded Colaba Point and entered the harbour, the
setting sun was lighting up the distant ranges of the Western
Ghauts, and by the time we had dropped anchor it was dark, so
I slept on board.

I woke to find the day breaking over the peaked mountains
of the Deccan, and revealing the wooded summits of the islands,
while a light land-breeze rippled the surface of the water, and
the bay was alive with the bright lateen sails of the native
cotton-boats. The many woods coming down in rich green
masses into the sea itself, lent a singular softness to the view,
and the harbour echoed with the capstan songs of all nations,
from the American to the Beloochee, from the Swedish to the
Greek.

The vegetation that surrounds the harbour, though the even
mass of green is broken here and there by the crimson cones
of the " gold mohur" trees, resembles that of Ceylon, and the
scene is rather tropical than Indian, but there is nothing
tropical and little that is Eastern in the bustle of the bay. The
lines of huge steamers, and forests of masts backed by the still
more crowded field of roofs and towers, impress you with a
sense of wealth and worldliness from which you gladly seek
relief by turning towards the misty beauty of the mountain
islands and the Western Ghauts. Were the harbour smaller, it
would be lovely ; as it is, the distances are over great.

Notwithstanding its vast trade, Bombay for purposes of
defence is singularly weak. The absence of batteries from the

524 GP.EATEE BRITAIN. [CHAP, svtt.

entrance to so great a trading port, strikes eyes that have seen
San Francisco and New York, and the marks on Bombay
Castle of the cannon-balls of the Mogul should be a warning to
the Bombay merchants to fortify their port against attacks by
sea, but act as a reminder to the traveller that, from a military
point of view, Kurrachee is a better harbour than Bombay, the
approach to which can easily be cut off, and its people starved-
One advantage, however, of the erection of batteries at the
harbour's mouth would be, that the inner fort might be pulled
down, unless it were thought advisable to retain it for the pro-
tection of the Europeans against riots, and that in any case the
broad space of cleared ground which now cuts the town in half
might be partly built on.

The present remarkable prosperity of Bombay is the result
of the late increase in the cotton trade, to the sudden decline
of which, in 1865 and 1866, has also been attributed the ruin
that fell upon the city in the last-named year. The panic, from
which Bombay has now so far recovered that it can no longer
be said that she has " not one merchant solvent," was chiefly a
reaction from a speculation-madness, in which the shares in a
land reclamation company which never commenced its opera-
tions once touched a thousand per cent, but was intensified by
the passage of the English panic-wave of 1866 across India and
round the world.

Not even in Mississippi is cotton more completely king than
in Bombay. Cotton has collected the hundred steamers and
the thousands of native boats that are anchored between the
Apollo Bunder and Mazagon ; cotton has built the great offices
and stores of seven and eight stories high ; cotton has furnished
the villas on Malabar Hill, that resemble the New Yorkers'
cottages on Staten Island.

The export of cotton from India rose from five millions
worth in 1859 to thirty-eight millions worth in 1864, and the
total exports of Bombay increased in the same proportion,
while the population of the city rose from 400,000 to 1,000,000.
We are accustomed to look at the East as standing still, but
Chicago itself never took a grander leap than did Bombay be-
tween 1860 and 1864. The rebellion in America gave the
impetus, but was not the sole cause of this prosperity ; and the

CHAP, xvii.] B C MBA 7. 525

Indian cotton-trade, Ihough checked by the peace, is not
destroyed. Cotton and jute are not the only Indian raw pro
ducts the export of which has increased suddenly of late. The
export of wool increased twenty-fold, of tobacco, three-fold, of
coffee, seven-fold in the last six years ; and the export of Indian
tea increased in five years from nothing to three or four hundred
thousand pounds. The old Indian exports, those which we asso-
ciate with the term " Eastern trade," are standing still, while the
raw produce trade is thus increasing : — spices, elephants' teeth,
pearls, jewels, bandannas, shellac, dates, and gum, are all de-
creasing, although the total exports of the country have trebled
in five years.

India needs but railroads to enable her to compete success-
fully with America in the growth of cotton, but the development
of the one raw product will open out her hitherto unknown
resources.

While staying at one of the great merchant-houses in the
Fort, I was able to see that the commerce of Bombay has not
grown up of itself. With some experience among hard workers
in the English towns, I was, nevertheless, astonished at the
work got through by senior clerks and junior partners at Bom-
bay. Although at first led away by the idea that men who
wear white linen suits all day, and smoke in rocking-chairs upon
the balcony for an hour after breakfast, cannot be said to do
much work, I soon found that men in merchants' houses at
Bombay work harder than they would be likely to do at home.
Their day begins at 6 A.M., and, as a rule, they work from then till
dinner at 8 or 9 P.M., taking an hour for breakfast, and two for
tiffin. My stay at Bombay was during the hottest fortnight in
the year, and twelve hours' work in the day, with the thermo-
meter never under 90° all the night, is an exhausting life.
Englishmen could not long survive the work, but the Bombay
merchants are all Scotch. In British settlements, from Canada
to Ceylon, from Dunedin to Bombay, for every Englishman
that you meet who has worked himself up to wealth from small
beginnings without external aid, you find ten Scotchmen. It
is strange, indeed, that Scotland has not become the popular
name for the United Kingdom.

Bombay life is not without its compensations. It is not

5a6 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAI\ ivn>

always May or June, and from November to March the climate
is all but perfect. Even in the hottest weather, the Byculla
Club is cool, and Mahabaleshwar is close at hand, for short
excursions, whenever the time is found; while the Bombay
mango is a fruit which may bear comparison with the peaches
of Salt Lake City, or the melons of San Francisco. The
Bombay merchants have not time, indeed, to enjoy the beauties
of their city, any more than Londoners have to visit West-
minster Abbey or explore the Tower; and as for "tropical
indolence," or "Anglo-Indian luxury," the bull-dogs are the
only members of the English community in India who can
discover anything but half-concealed hardships in the life.
Each dog has his servant to attend to all his wants, and, know-
ing this, the cunning brute always makes the boy cany him up
the long flights of stairs that lead to the private rooms over the
merchants' houses in the Fort.

Bombay bazaar is the gayest of gay scenes. Besides the
ordinary crowd of any " native town," there are solemn Jains,
copper-coloured Jews, white-coated Portuguese, Persians, Arabs,
Catholic priests, bespangled nautch girls, and grinning Seedees.
The Parsees are strongest of all the merchant peoples of Bom-
bay in numbers, in intelligence, and in wealth. Among the
shopkeepers of their race, there is an over-prominence of trade
shrewdness in the expression of the face, and in the shape even
of the head. The Louvre bust of Richelieu, in which we have
the ideal of a wheedler, is a common type in the Parsee shops
of the Bombay bazaar. The Parsee people, however, whatever
their looks, are not only in complete possession of Bombay,
but are the dark-skinned race to which we shall have to entrust
the largest share in the regeneration of the East. Trading as
they do in every city between Galle and Astrakan, but every-
where attached to the English rule, they bear to us the relative
position that the Greeks occupy towards Russia.

Both in religion and in education, the Parsees are, as a com-
munity, far in advance of the Indian Mohamedans, and of the
Hindoos. Their creed has become a pure deism, in which
God's works are worshipped as the manifestations or visible
representatives of God on earth — rfire, the sun, and the sea taking
the first places; although in the climate of Bombay, prayers

CHAP. xvn.J BO MB AT. 537

to the sun must be made up of more supplications than thanks-
givings. The Parsee men are soundly taught, and there is not
a pauper in the whole tribe. In the education and elevation
of women, no Eastern race has as yet done much, but the
Parsees have done the most and have paved the way for further
progress.

In the matter of the seclusion of w^men, the Parsee move-
ment has had some effect upon others than Parsees, and the
Hindoos of Bombay city stand far before even those of Calcutta
in the earnestness and success of their endeavours to promote
the moral elevation of women. Nothing can be done towards
the regeneration of India so long as the women of all classes
remain in their present degradation ; and although many native
gentlemen in Bombay already recognise the fact, and act upon
it, progress is slow, since there is no basis upon which to begin.
The Hindoos will not send their wives to schools where there
are European lady teachers, for fear of proselytism taking place ;
and native women teachers are not yet to be found ; hence all
teaching must needs be left to men. Nothing, moreover, can
be done with female children in Western India, where girls are
married at from five to twelve years old, although it is true that
the report of the Alexandra school contains a few entries such
as " Herabai, wife of Esq.; aged 13, attendance irregular."

I had not been two days in Bombay when a placard caught
my eye, announcing a performance at the theatre of " Romeo
and Juliet, in the Maratta tongue;" but the play had no Friar
Lawrence, no apothecary, and no nurse ; it was nothing but a
simple Maratta love tale, followed by some religious tableaux.
In the first piece an Englishman was introduced, and repre-
sented as kicking every native that crossed his path with the
exclamation of " Damned fool :" at each repetition of which the
whole house laughed. It is to be feared that this portion of
the play was " founded upon fact" * On my way home through
the native town at night, I came on a marriage procession
better than any that I had seen. A band of fifers were scream-
ing the most piercing of notes in front of an illuminated house,
at which the horsemen and carriages were just arriving, both

* Plays satirizing the English became fashionable in 1874, and wer«
prohibited in 1875.

5J8 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP, xvn

men and women clothed in jewelled robes, and silks of a hun-
dred colours that flashed and glittered in the blaze of the red
torches. The procession, like the greater number of the most
gorgeous ceremonials of Bombay, was conducted by Parsees to
celebrate the marriage of one of their own people ; but it is a
curious fact that night-marriages were forced upon the Parsees
by the Hindoos, and One of the conditions upon which the
Parsees were received into India was, that their marriage pro-
cessions should take place at night.

The Caves of Elephanta have been many times described.
The grandest sight of India, after the Taj, is the three-faced
bust of the Hindoo Trinity, or God in his threefold character
of Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer. No Grecian sculpture
that I have seen so well conveys the idea of Godhead. The
Greeks could idealize man, the Italians can paint the saint, but
the builders of Elephanta had the power of executing the
highest ideal of a pagan god. The repose which distinguishes
the heads of the Creator and Preserver is not the meditation
of the saint, but the calm of unbounded power ; and the
Destroyer's head portends not destruction, so much as annihi-
lation, to the world. The central head is, in its mysterious
solemnity, that which the Sphinx should be, and is not ; but one
attribute alone is common to the expression of all three faces,
—the presence of the Inscrutable.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE MOHURRUM.

Ai THOUGH Poonah is the ancient Maratta capital, and a
thoroughly Hindoo city, it is famed throughout India for the
splendour with which its people celebrate the Mohamedan
Mohurrum, so I timed my visit in such a way as to reach the
town upon the day of the " taboot procession."

The ascent from the Konkan, or flat country of Bombay, by
the Western Ghauts to the table-land of the Deccan, known as
the Bhore Ghaut incline, in which the railway rises from the
plain 2000 feet into the Deccan, by a series of steps sixteen
miles in length, is far more striking as an engineering work
than the passage of the Alleghanies on the Baltimore and Ohio
track, and as much inferior to the Sierra Nevada railway works.
The views from the carriage windows are singularly like those
in the Kaduganava Pass between Columbo and Kandy ; in fact,
the Western Ghauts are of the same character as the mountains
of Ceylon, the hills being almost invariably either flat-topped or
else rent by volcanic action into great pinnacles and needle peaks.

The rainy season had not commenced, and the vegetation
that gives the Ghauts their charm was wanting, although the
"mango showers" were beginning, and spiders and other
insects, unseen during the hot weather, were creeping into the
houses to seek shelter from the rains. One of the early travel-
lers to the Deccan told the good folks at home that after the
rains the spiders' webs were so thickly laced across the jungle,
that the natives of the country were in the habit of hiring
elephants to walk before them and force a passage 1 At the
time of my visit, neither webs nor jungle were to be seen, and
the spiders were very harmless-looking fellows. One effect of

2 M

530 GREATER BRITAIX. [CHAP. xvm.

the approaching monsoon was visible from the summit of the
Ghaut, for the bases of the mountains were hid by the low
clouds that foretell the coming rains. The inclines are held to
be unsafe during the monsoon, but they are not so bad as the
Kotree and Kurrachee line, which runs only " weather permit-
ting," and is rendered useless by two hours' rain — a fall which,
luckily for the shareholders, occurs only about once in every
seven years. On the Bhore Ghaut, on the contrary, 220 inches
in four months is not unusual, and " the rains " here take the
place of the avalanche of colder ranges, and carry away bridges,
lines, and trains themselves ; but in the dry season there is a
want of the visible presence of difficulties overcome, which de-
tracts from the interest of the line.

At day-break at Poonah, the tomtom-ing, which had lasted
without intermission through the ten days' fast, came to a
sudden end, and the police and European magistrates began
to marshal the procession of the taboots, or shrines, in the
bazaar.

A proclamation in English and Maratta was posted on the
walls, announcing the order of the procession and the rules to be
enforced. The orders were, that the procession to the river
was to commence at seven A.M. and to end at eleven A.M., and
that tomtom-ing, except during those hours, would not be
allowed. The taboots of the light cavalry, of three regiments ot
native infantry, and of the followers of three English regiments
of the line, were, however, to start at six o'clock : the order oi
precedence among the cantonment or regimental taboots was
carefully laid down, and the carrying of arms forbidden.

When I reached the bazaar, I found the native police were
working in vain in trying to force into line a vast throng of
bannermen, drummers, and saints, who surrounded the various
taboots or models of the house of Ali and Fatima where their
sons Hassan and Hoosein were bora. Some of the shrines
were of the size and make of the dolls' houses of our English chil-
dren, others in their height and gorgeousness resembled the most
successful of our burlesques upon Guy Fawkes : some were borne
on litters by four men ; others mounted on light carts and drawn
by bullocks, while the gigantic taboot of the Third Cavalry
required six buffaloes for its transport to the river. Many

CHAI>. xvm.] THE MOHURRUM. 537

privates of our native infantry regiments had joined the proces-
sion in uniform, and it was as strange to me to see privates in
our service engaged in howling round a sort of Maypole, and
accompanying their yells with the tomtom, as it must have been
to the English in Lucknow in 1857 to hear the bands of the
jebel regiments playing " Cheer, boys, cheer."

Some of the troops in Poonah were kept within their lines
all day, to be ready to suppress disturbances caused by the
Moslem fanatics, who, excited by the Mohurrum, often run
a-muck among their Hindoo neighbours. In old times, quarrels
between the Sonnites and Shiites, or orthodox and dissenting
Mussulmen, used to be added to those between Mohamedans
and Hindoos at the season of the Mohurrum, but except upon
the Afghan border these feuds have all but died out now.

At the head of the procession marched a row of pipers,
producing sounds of which no Highland regiment would have
felt ashamed, followed by long-bearded, turban-wearing
Marattas, on foot and horseback, surrounding an immense
pagoda-shaped taboot placed on a cart, and drawn by bullocks ;
boys swinging incense walked before and followed, and I
remarked a gigantic cross — a loan, no doubt, from the Jesuit
College for this Mohamedan festivity. After each taboot, there
came a band of Hindoo " tigers " — men painted in thorough
imitation of the jungle king, and wearing tiger ears and tails.
Sometimes, instead of tigers, we had men painted in the colours
worn by " sprites " in an English pantomime, and all — sprites
and tigers — danced in the fashion of the mediaeval mummers.
Behind the tigers and buffoons there followed women, walk-
ing in their richest dress. The nautch girls of Poonah are
reputed the best in all the East, but the monotonous Bombay
nautch is not to be compared with the Cashmere nautch of
Lahore.

Some taboots were guarded on either side by sheiks on
horseback, wearing turbans of the honourable green which de-
notes direct descent from the Prophet, though the genealogy is
sometimes doubtful, as in the case of the Angel Gabriel, who,
according to Mohamedan writers, wears a green turban, as
being an " honorary " descendant of Mohamed.

Thousands of men and women thronged the road down which

2 M 2

532 QREATEK BRITAIN. [CHAP. xvm.

the taboots were forced to pass, or sat in the shade of the peepul
trees until the taboot of their family or street came up, and then
followed it, dancing and tomtom-beating like the rest.

Poonah is famed for the grace of its women and the elegance
of their gait. In the hot weather, the saree is the sole garment
of the Hindoo women, and lends grace to the form without
concealing the outlines of the trunk or the comely shapes of the
well-turned limbs. The saree is eight yards long, but of such
soft thin texture that it makes no show upon the person. It is
a singular testimony to the strength of Hindoo habits, that at
this Mohamedan festival the Mohamedan women should all be
wearing the long seamless saree of the conquered Hindoos.

In the Mohurrum procession at Poonah there was nothing
distinctively Mohamedan. Hindoos joined in the festivities,
a,nd " Portuguese," or descendants of the slaves, half-castes, and
native Christians who at. the time of the Portuguese occupation
of Surat assumed high-sounding names and titles, and now form
a large proportion of the inhabitants of towns in the Bombay
Presidency. The temptation of a ten days' holiday is too great
to be resisted by the prejudices of even the Christians or
Hindoos.

The procession ended at the Ghauts on the river-side, where
the taboots, one after the other, made their exit from ten days
of glory into unfathomable slush ; and such was the number of
the " camp taboots," as those of the native soldiers in our service
are styled, and the " bazaar taboots," or city contributions, that
the immersion ceremonies were not completed when the illumi-
nation and fireworks began.

After dark, the bazaar was lit with coloured fires, and with
the ghostly paper-lanterns that give no light ; and the noise of
tomtoms and fire-crackers recommenced in spite of proclama-
tions and police-rules. Were there in Indian streets anything
to burn, the Mohurrum would cause as many fires in Hindostan
as Independence-day in the United States; but, although houses
are burnt out daily in the bazaars, they are never burnt down,
for nothing but water can damage mud. We could have played
our way into Lucknow in 1857 with pumps and hoses at least
as fast as we contrived to batter a road into it with shot and
shell.

. inn.] THE MOHVRRVM. ^

During the day I had been amused with the sayings of some
British recruits, who were watching the immersion ceremonies,
but in the evening one of them was in the bazaar, uproariously
drunk, kicking every native against whom he stumbled, and
shouting to an officer of another regiment, who did not like to
interfere : " I'm a private soldier, I know, but I'm a gentleman ;
I know what the hatmosphere is, I do ; and I knows a cloud
when I sees it, damned if I don't." On the other hand, in
some fifty thousand natives holiday-making that day, many of
them Christians and low-caste men, with no prejudice against
drink, a drunken man was not to be seen.

It is impossible to over-estimate the harm done to the
English name in India by the conduct of drunken soldiers and
" European loafers." The latter class consists chiefly of dis-
charged railway guards and runaway sailors from Calcutta, —
men who, travelling across India and living at free quarters on
the trembling natives, become ruffianly beyond description from
the effect upon their originally brutal natures of the possession
of unusual power.

The popularity of Mohamedan festivals such as that of the
Mohurrum has been one of the many causes which have led us
to believe that the Mohamedans form a considerable proportion
of the population of Hindostan ; but the census in the North-
West Provinces revealed the fact that they had there been
popularly set down as three times as numerous as they are, and
it is probable that the same is the case throughout all India.
Not only are the Indian Mohamedans few, but their Mohame-
danism sits lightly on them : they are Hindoos in caste distinc-
tions, in ceremonies, in daily life, and all but Hindoos in their
actual worship. On the other hand, this Mohurrum showed me
that the Hindoos do not scruple to attend the commemoration
of Hassan and Hoosein. At Benares there is a temple which
is used in common by Mohamedans and Hindoos, and through-
out India, among the low-caste people, there is now little dis-
tinction between the religions. The descendants of the
Mohamedan conquerors, who form the leading families in
several native States, and also in Oude itself, are among the
most dangerous of our Indian subjects, but they appear to have
but little hold upon the humble classes of their fellow-wor-

534 GREATER BRTTATN. [CHAP. xvm.

shippers, and their attempts to stir up their people to active
measures against the English have always failed. We, however,
have hitherto somewhat ignored the claims upon our considera-
tion of the Indian Mohamedans and still more numerous hill-
tribes, and permitted our Governments to act as though the
Hindoos and the Sikhs were the only inhabitants of Hin-
dostau.

53*

CHAPTER XIX.
ENGLISH LEARNING.

THE English traveller who crosses India from Calcutta to
Bombay is struck with the uncivilized condition of the land. He
has heard in England of palaces and temples, of art treasures
and of native poetry, of the grace of the Hindoo maidens, of
Cashmere shawls, of the Taj, of the Pearl Mosque, of a civiliza-
tion as perfect as the European, and as old as the Chinese.
When he lands and surveys the people, he finds them naked
barbarians, plunged in the densest ignorance and superstition,
and safe only from extermination because the European cannot
dwell permanently in the climate of their land. The stories we
are told at home are in no sense false : — the Hindoos, of all
classes, are graceful in their carriage ; their tombs and mosques
are of extraordinary beauty, their art patterns the despair of our
best craftsman ; the native poetry is at least equal to our own,
and the Taj the noblest building in the world. Every word is
true, but the whole forms but a singularly small portion of the
truth. The religious legends, the art patterns, the perfect
manner and the graceful eye and taste seem to have descended
to the Hindoos of to-day from a generation whose general
civilization they have forgotten. The poetry is confined to a
few members of a high-caste race, and is mainly an importation
from abroad ; the architecture is that of the Moslem conquerors.
Shah Jehan, a Mohamedan emperor and a foreigner, built the
Taj ; Akbar the Great, another Turk, was the designer of the
Pearl Mosque ; and the Hindoos can no more be credited with
the architecture of their early conquerors than they can with
the* railways and bridges of their English rulers, or with the
waterworks of Bombay city. The Sikhs are chiefly foreigners j

536 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xot.

but of the purely native races, the Rajpoots are only fine bar-
barians, the Bengalees mere savages, and the tribes of Central
India but little better than the Australian aborigines or the
brutes. Throughout India there are remains of an early civili-
zation, but it has vanished as completely as it has in Africa j
and the Cave-temples stand as far from the daily life of Hindo-
stan as the Pyramids do from that of Egypt.

It is to be feared that the decline has been extremely rapid
since the day when we arrived in India. Just as it is almost
impossible, by any exertion of the mind, to realize in Mexico
the fact that the present degraded Aztecs are the same people
whom the Spaniards found, only some three hundred years ago,
dwelling in splendid palaces, and worshipping their unknown
gods in golden temples through the medium of a sacred tongue,
so now it is difficult to believe that the pauperized inhabitants
of Orissa and the miserable peasantry of Oude are the sons of
the chivalrous warriors who fought in the last century against
Clive.

The truth is, that in surveying Oriental empires from a dis-
tance, we are dazzled by the splendour of the kings and priests ;
drawing near, we find an oppressed and miserable slave class,
from whose hard earnings the wealth of the great is wrung ;
called on to govern the country, we extinguish the kings and
priests in the fashion in which Captain Hodson, in 1857, shot
the last sons of the Imperial family of India in a dry ditch,
while we were transporting the last Mogul, along with our
native thieves, in a convict ship to British Burmah. There
remains the slave class, and little else. We may select a fe\v
of these to be our policemen and torturers-in-chief, we may
pick another handful to wear red coats, and be our guards and
the executioners of their countrymen ; we may teach a few to
chatter some words of English, and then, calling them great
scoundrels, may set them in our railway stations and our offices ;
but virtually, in annexing any Eastern country, we destroy the
ruling class, and reduce the government to a mere imperialism,
where one man rules and the rest are slaves. No parallel can
be drawn in Europe or North America to that state of things
which exists wherever we carry our arms in the East : were
the President and Congress in America, and ail the wealthy

CHAP xnt/i ENGLISH LEARNMG. 537

merchants of the great towns, to be destroyed to-morrow, the
next day would see the government proceeding quietly in the
hands of another set every bit as intelligent, as wise, and good.
In a lesser degree, the same would be the case in England or in
France. The best example that could be given nearer home
of that which occurs continually in the East would be one
which should suppose that the Emperor and nobility in Russia
were suddenly destroyed, and the country left in the hands of
the British ambassador and the late serfs. Even this example
would fail to convey a notion of the extent of the revolution
which takes place on the conquest by Britain of an Eastern
country ; for in the East the nobles are better taught and the
people more ignorant than they are in Russia, and the change
causes a more complete destruction of poetry, of literature, and
of art.

It being admitted, then, that we are in the position of having,
in Hindostan, a numerous and ignorant, but democratic people
to govern from without, there comes the question of what
should be the general character of our government. The im-
mediate questions of the day may be left to our subordinates in
India ; but the direction and the tendencies of legislation are
matters for us at home. There can be nothing more ridiculous
than the position of those of our civilians in India who, while
they treat the natives with profound contempt, are continually
crying out against government from at home, on the ground set
forth in the shibboleth of " India for the Indians." If India is
to be governed by the British race at all, it must be governed
from Great Britain. The general conditions of our rule must
be dictated at London by the English people, and nothing but
the execution of our decrees, the collection of evidence, and
the framing of mere rules, left to our subordinates in the East.

First among the reforms that must be introduced from
London is the general instruction in the English language of
the native population. Except upon a theory that will fairly
admit of the forcing upon a not unwilling people of this first of
all great means of civilization, our presence in India is wholly
indefensible. Unless also that be done, our presence in India,
or that of some nation stronger than us and not more scrupulous,
must endure for ever, for it is plainly impossible that a native

538 GREATER BRITAIN. [cMAr. IISL

government capable of holding its own against Russia and
America can otherwise be built up in Hindostan. Upon the
contrary supposition, — namely, that we do not intend at any
time to quit our hold on India, — the instruction of the people
in our language becomes still more important. Upon the
second theory, we must teach them English, the language of the
British Government ; upon the first, English, the language of
the world. Upon either theory we must teach them English.
Nothing can better show the trivial character of the much-
talked-of reforms introduced into India in the last few years,
since our Queen has assumed the imperial throne of Hindostan,
than the fact that no progress whatever has been made in a
matter of far more grave importance than are any number of
miles of railway, canal, or Grand Trunk roads. Our civilians
in India tell us that, if you teach the natives English, you
expose them to the attacks of Christian missionaries, and us to
revolt — an exposure which speaks not too highly of the Govern-
ment which is forced to make it. Our military officers, naturally
hating the country to which they now are exiled, instead of
being sent as formerly of their own free will, tell you that every
native who can speak English is a scoundrel, a liar, and a thief,
which is, perhaps, if we except the Parsees, not far from true at
present, when teaching is given only to a few lads, who thus
acquire a monopoly of the offices in which money passes
through native hands. Their opinion has no bearing whatever
upon a general instruction of the people, under which we should
evidently be able to pick our men, as we now pick them for
all employments in which a knowledge of English is not
required.

A mere handful of Spaniards succeeded in naturalizing their
language in a country twice as large as Europe : in the whole
of South America, the Central States, and Mexico. Not only
there, but in the United States, the Utes and Comanches, wild
as they are, speak Spanish, while their own language is forgotten.
In the west of Mexico there is no trace of pure Spanish blood,
there is even comparatively little mixture — yet Spanish, and
that of the best, is spoken, to the exclusion of every other
language, in Manzanillo and Acapulco. This phenomenon is
not confined to the Western world. In Bombay Presidency,

CHAI six.] ENGLISH LEARNING. 539

five millions of so-called Portuguese — who, however, for the
most part are pure Hindoos — speak a Latin tongue, and
worship at the temples of the Christian God. French makes
progress in Saigon, Dutch in Java. In Canada, we find the
Huron Indians French in language and religion. English alone,
it would seem, cannot be pressed upon any of the dark-skinned
tribes. In New Zealand, the Maories know no English ; in
Natal, the Zulus ; in India, the Hindoos. The Dutch, finally
expelled from South Africa in 1815 and from Ceylon in 1802,
have yet more hold by their tongue upon the natives of those
lands than have the English — masters of them since the Dutch
expulsion.

To the early abolition or total non-existence of slavery in the
British colonies, we may, perhaps, trace our unfortunate failure
to spread our mother tongue. Dutch, Portuguese, Spaniards,
all practised a slavery of the widest kind ; all had about them
not native servants, frequently changing from the old master to
the new, and passing unheeded to whatever service money
could tempt them to engage in, but domestic slaves, bred up in
the family, and destined, probably, to die within the house
where they were reared, to whom the language of the master
was taught, because your Spanish grandee, with power of life
and death over his family slaves, was not the man to condescend
to learn his servants' tongue in order that his commands should
be more readily understood. Another reason may have caused
the Portuguese and other dominant races of the later middle
ages to have insisted that their slaves should learn the language
of the master and the government ; namely, that in learning
the new, the servile families would speedily forget the older
tongue, and thus become as incapable of mixing in the con-
spiracies and insurrections of their brother natives as Pyrenean
shepherd-dogs of consorting with their progenitors, the wolves.
Whatever their reasons, however, the Spaniards succeeded
where we have failed.

The greatest of our difficulties are the financial. No cheap
system is workable by us, and our dear system we have not the
means to work. The success of our rule immediately depends
upon the purity and good feeling of the rulers ; yet there are
villages in British India where the people have never seen a

540 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xtx.

tvhite man, and off the main roads, and outside the district
towns, the sight of a European official is extremely rare. To
the inhabitants of the greater portion of rural India, the
governor who symbolizes British rule is a cruel and corrupt
Hindoo policeman : himself not improbably a Bengal mutineer
in 1857, or drawn from the classes whom our most ignorant
Sepoys themselves despised. It is not easy to see how this
vital defect can be amended, except by the slow process of
raising up a native population that we can trust and put in
office, and this is impossible unless we encourage and reward
the study of the English tongue. The most needed of all social
reforms in India — an improvement in the present thoroughly
servile condition of the native women — could itself in no way be
more easily brought about than by the familiarization of the
Hindoos with English literature ; and that greatest of all the
curses of India, false-swearing in the courts, would undoubtedly
be both directly and indirectly checked by the introduction of
our language. The spread of the English tongue need be no
check to that of the ancient classical languages of the East :
the two studies would go hand in hand. It is already a disgrace
to us that while we spend annually in India a large sum upon
our chaplains and church schools, we toss only one hundredth
part of the sum — a paltry few thousands of rupees — to the
native colleges, where the most venerable of languages — San-
scrit, Arabic, and Persian — are taught by the men who alone
can thoroughly understand them. At the moment when Eng-
land, Germany, and America are struggling for the palm in the
teaching of Oriental literature — when Oxford, Edinburgh, and
London are contending with each other, and with Berlin, Yale,
and Harvard, in translating and explaining Eastern books — our
Government in India is refusing the customary help to the
publication of Sanscrit works, and starving the teachers of the
language.*

So long as the natives remain ignorant of the English tongue,
they remain ignorant of all the civilization of our time — igno-
rant alike of political and physical science, of philosophy and
true learning. It is needless to say that, if French or German

* Since the publication of "Greater Britain," some progress has been
made.

CHAP. KIX.] ENGLISH LEAKS f SO. $41

were taught them instead of English, they would be as well oft
in this respect ; but English, as the tongue of the ruling race,
has the vast advantage that its acquisition by the Hindoos will
soon place the government of India in native hands, and thus,
gradually relieving us of an almost intolerable burthen, will
civilize and set free the people of Hindostan.

542 ORLA.TER BRITAIN. [CHAP,

CHAPTER XX.
INDIA.

" ALL general observations upon India are necessarily absurd,"
said to me at Simla a distinguished officer of the Viceroy's
government ; but, although this is true enough of theories that
bear upon the customs, social or religious, of the forty or fifty
peoples which make up what in England we style the " Hindoo
race," it has no bearing on the consideration of the policy which
should guide our actual administration of the Empire.

England in the East is not the England that we know.
Flousy Britannia, with her anchor and ship, becomes a myste-
rious Oriental despotism, ruling a sixth of the human race,
nominally for the natives' own good, and certainly for no one
else's, by laws and in a manner opposed to every tradition and
every prejudice of the whole of the various tribes of which this
vast population is composed — scheming, annexing, out-manceu-
vering Russia, and sometimes, it is to be feared, out-lying Persia
herself.

In our island home, we plume ourselves upon our hatred of
political extraditions : we would scorn to ask the surrender of a
political criminal of our own, we would die in the last ditch
sooner than surrender those of another crown. What a contrast
we find to this when we look at our conduct in the East ! During
the mutiny of 1857, some of our rebel subjects escaped into
the Portuguese territory at Goa. We demanded their extradi-
tion, which the Portuguese refused. We insisted. The offer
we finally accepted was, that they should be transported to the
Portuguese settlement at Timor, we supplying transports. An
Indian transport conveying these men to their island grave, but
carrying the British flag, touched at Batavia in 1858, to the

CHAP. ix.J INDIA. 543

astonishment of the honest Dutchmen, who knew England as a
defender of national liberty in Europe.

Although despotic, our government of India is not bad;
indeed, the hardest thing that can be said of it is that it is too
good. We do our duty by the natives manfully, but they care
little about that, and we are continually hurting their prejudices
and offending them in small things, to which they attach more
importance than they do to great To conciliate the Hindoos,
we should spend io,ooo/. a year in support of native literature
to please the learned, and io,ooo/. on fireworks to delight the
wealthy and the low-caste people. Instead of this, we worry
them with municipal institutions and benevolent inventions that
they cannot and will not understand. The attempt to introduce
trial by jury into certain parts of India was laudable, but it has
ended in one of those failures which discredit the Government
in the eyes of its own subordinates. If there is a European
foreman of jury, the natives salaam to him, and ask : " What
does the sahib say ? " If not, they look across the court to the
native barristers, who hold up fingers, each of which means
100 rs., and thus bid against each other for the verdict; for,
while natives as a rule are honest in their personal or individual
dealings, yet in places of trust — railway clerkships, secretary-
ships of departments, and so on — they are almost invariably
willing to take bribes.

Throughout India, such trials as are not before a jury are
conducted with the aid of native assessors as members of the
court. This works almost as badly as the jury does, the judge
giving his decision without any reference to the opinion of the
assessors. The story runs that the only use of assessors is, that
in an appeal — where the judge and assessors had agreed — the
advocate can say that the judge " has abdicated his functions,
and yielded to the absurd opinion of a couple of ignorant and
dishonest natives," — or, if the judge had gone against his client
in spite of the assessors being inclined the other way, that the
judge " has decided in the teeth of all experienced and impartial
native opinion, as declared by the voices of two honest and
intelligent assessors."

Our introduction of juries is not an isolated instance of our
pomewhat blind love for " progress." If in the already-pub-

544 0 £ EATER BUI TAIN. [CHAP, xs-

lished portions of the civil code — for instance, the parts which
relate to succession, testamentary and intestate — you read in
the illustrations York for Delhi, and Pimlico for Sultanpore,
there is not a word to show that the code is meant for India, or
for an Oriental race at all. It is true that the testamentary
portion of the code applies at present only to European resi-
dents in India ; but the advisability of extending it to natives
is under consideration, and this extension is only a matter of
time. The result of over-great rapidity of legislation, and of
unyielding adherence to English or Roman models in the
Indian codes, must be that our laws will never have the
slightest hold upon the people, and that, if we are swept from
India, our laws will vanish with us. The Western character of
our codes, and their want of elasticity and of adaptability to
Eastern conditions, is one among the many causes of our
unpopularity.

The old school Hindoos fear that we aim at subverting all
their dearest and most venerable institutions, and the free-
thinkers of Calcutta and the educated natives hate us because,
while we preach culture and progress, we give them no chance
of any but a subordinate career. The discontent of the first-
named class we can gradually allay, by showing them the ground-
lessness of their suspicions, but the shrewd Bengalee baboos
are more difficult to deal with, and can be met only in one
way — namely, by the employment of natives in offices of high
trust, under the security afforded by the infliction, of the most
degrading penalties on proof of the smallest corruption. One
of the points in which the policy of Akbar surpassed our own
was in the association of qualified Hindoos with his Mohamedan
fellow-countrymen in high places in his government. The fact,
moreover, that native governments are still preferred to British
rule, is a strong argument in favour of the employment by us
of natives ; for, roughly speaking, their governmental system
differs from ours only in the employment of native officers in-
stead of English. There is not now existent a thoroughly
native government ; at some time or other, we have controlled
in a greater or less degree the governments of all the native
States. To study purely native rule, we should have to visit
Caboul or Herat, and watch the Afghan princes putting out

CHAP. xx.J INDIA. 545

each other's eyes, while their people are engaged in never-
ending wars, or in murdering strangers in the name of God.

Natives might more safely be employed to fill the higher
than the lower offices. It is more easy to find honest and
competent native governors or councilmen than honest and
efficient native clerks and policemen. Moreover, natives have
more temptations to be corrupt, and more facilities for being so
with safety, in low positions than in high. A native policeman
or telegraph official can take his bribe without fear of detection
by his European chief; not so a native governor, with European
subordinates about him.

The common Anglo-Indian objections to the employment of
natives in our service are, when examined, found to apply only
to the employment of incompetent natives. To say that the
native lads of Bengal, educated in our Calcutta colleges, are
half educated and grossly immoral, is to say that, under a proper
system of selection of officers, they could never come to be
employed. All that is necessary at the moment is that we should
concede the principle by appointing, year by year, more natives
to high posts, and that, by holding the civil service examinations
in India as well as in England, and by establishing throughout
India well-regulated schools, vre should place the competent
native youths upon an equal footing with the English.

That we should ever come to be thoroughly popular in India
is not to be expected. By the time the old ruling families have
died out, or completely lost their power, the people whom we
rescued from their oppression will have forgotten that the
oppression ever existed, and as long as the old families last,
they will hate us steadily. One of the documents published in
the Gazette of India, while I was at Simla, was from the pen of
Asudulla Muhamadi, a well-known Mohamedan of the North-
West Provinces. His grievances were the cessation of the
practice of granting annuities to the " sheiks of noble families,"
the conferring of the " high offices of Mufti, Sudr'-Ameen, and
Tahsildar," on persons not of " noble extraction," " the educa-
tion of the children of the higher and lower classes on the same
footing, without distinction," " the desire that women should be
treated like men in every respect," and "the formation ot
English schools for the education of girls of the lower order."

2 N

546 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xx.

He ended his State paper by pointing out the ill effects of the
practice of conferring on the poor "respectable berths, thereby
enabling them to indulge in luxuries which their fathers never
dreamt of, and to play the upstart ;" and declared that to a
time-honoured system of class government there had succeeded
" a state of things which I cannot find words to express." It
is not likely that our rule will ever have much hold on the class
that Asudulla represents, for not only is our government in
India a despotism, but its tendency is to become an imperi-
alism, or despotism exercised over a democratic people, such as
we see in Russia.

We are levelling all ranks in India; we are raising the
humblest men, if they will pass certain examinations, to posts
which we refuse to the most exalted of nobles unless they can
pass higher. A clever son of a bheestie, or sweeper, if he will
learn English, not only may, but must rise to be a railway
baboo, or deputy collector of customs; whereas for Hindoo
rajahs or Mohamedan nobles of Delhi creation, there is no
chance of anything but gradual decline of fortune. Even our Star
of India is democratic in its working: we refuse it to men of the
highest descent, to confer it on self-made viziers of native States,
or others who were shrewd enough to take our side during the
rebellion. All this is very modern, and full of " progress," no
doubt ; but it is progress towards imperialism, or equality of
conditions under paternal despotism.

Not only does the democratic character of our rule set the
old families against us, but it leads also to the failure of our
attempt to call around us a middle class, an educated thinking
body of natives with something to lose, who, seeing that we are
ruling India for her own good, would support us heart and soul,
and form the best of bucklers for our dominion. As it is, the
attempt has long been made in name, but, as a matter of fact,
we have humbled the upper class, and failed to raise a middle
class to take its place. We have crushed the prince without
setting up the trader in his stead.

The wide-spread hatred of the English does not prove that
they are bad rulers ; it is merely the hatred that Easterns always
bear their masters ; yet masters the Hindoos will have. Even
the enlightened natives do not look with longing towards a

CHAP, xx.] INDIA. 547

future of self-government, however distant. Most intelligent
Hindoos would like to see the Russians drive us out of India,
not that any of them think the Russians would be better rulers
or kinder men, but merely for the pleasure of seeing their
traditional oppressors beaten. What, then, are we to do ? The
only justification for our presence in India is the education for
freedom of the Indian races ; but at this moment they will not
have freedom at a gift, and many Indian statesmen declare that
no amount of education will ever fit them for it. For a score
of centuries, the Hindoos have bribed and taken bribes, and
corruption has eaten into the national character so deeply, that
those who are the best of judges declare that it can never be
washed out.

The ancients believed that the neighbourhood of frost and
snow was fatal to philosophy and to the arts ; to the Cartha-
ginians, Egyptians, and Phoenicians, the inhabitants of Gaul of
Germany, and of Britain were rude barbarians of the frozen
North, that no conceivable lapse of time could convert into
anything much better than talking bears — a piece of empiricism
which has a close resemblance to our view of India. It is idle
to point to the tropics and say that free communities do not
exist within those limits ; the map of the world will show that
freedom exists only in the homes of the English race. France,
the authoress of modern liberty, has failed as yet to learn how
to retain the boon for which she is ever ready to shed her blood ;
Switzerland, a so-called free State, is the home of the worst of
bigotry and intolerance ; the Spanish republics are notoriously
despotisms under democratic titles ; America, Australia, Britain,
the homes of our race, are as yet the only dwelling-spots of
freedom.

There is much exaggeration in the cry that self-government,
personal independence, and true manliness can exist only
where the snow will lie upon the ground, that cringing slavish-
ness and imbecile submission follow the palm-belt round the
world. If freedom be good in one country, it is good in all, for
there is nothing in its essence which should limit it in time or
place : the only question that is open for debate is whether
freedom — an admitted good — is a benefit which, if once con-
ferred upon the inhabitants of the tropics, will be maintained

2 N 2

548 GREATER BRITAIN. [en vr. xx.

by them against invasion from abroad and rebellion from
within ; if it be given bit by bit, each step being taken only
when public opinion is fully prepared for its acceptance, there
can be no fear that freedom will ever be resigned without a
struggle. We should know that Sikhs, Kandians, Scindians,
Marattas, have fought bravely enough for national independence
to make it plain that they will struggle to the death for liberty
as soon as they can be made to see its worth. It will take years
to efface the stain of a couple of hundred years of slavery in the
negroes of America, and it may take scores of years to heal the
deeper sores of Hindostan ; but history teaches us to believe
that the time will come when the Indians will be fit for freedom.

Whether the future advent of a better day for India be a fact
or a dream, our presence in the country is justifiable. Were we
to quit India, we must leave her to Russia or to herself. If to
Russia, the political shrewdness and commercial blindness of
the Northern Power would combine to make our pocket suffer
by loss of money as much as would our dignity by so plain a
confession of our impotence ; while the unhappy Indians would
discover that there exists a European nation capable of sur-
passing Eastern tyrants in corruption by as much as it already
exceeds them in dull weight of leaden cruelty and oppression.
If to herself, unextinguishable anarchy would involve our
Eastern trade and India's happiness in a hideous and lasting ruin.

If we are to keep the country, we must consider gravely
whether it be possible properly to administer its affairs upon the
present system — whether, for instance, the best supreme govern-
ment for an Eastern empire be a body composed of a chief
invariably removed from office just as he begins to understand
his duty, and a council of worn-out Indian officers, the whole
being placed in the remotest corner of Western Europe, for the
sake of removing the government from the " pernicious influence
of local prejudice."

India is at this moment governed by the Indian Council at
Westminster, who are responsible to nobody. The Secretary
of State is responsible to Parliament for a policy which he
cannot control, and the Viceroy is a head-clerk.

India can be xroverned in two ways ; either in India or in
London, Under the former plan, we should leave the bureau*

CHAP, xx.] INDIA. 549

cracy in India independent, preserving merely some slight
control at home — a control which should, of course, be purely
parliamentary and English ; under the other plan — which is that
to which it is to be hoped the people of England will command
their representatives to adhere — India would be governed from
London by the English nation, in the interests of humanity and
civilization. Under either system, the Indian Council in
London would be valuable as an advising body ; but it does
not follow, because the Council can advise, that therefore they
can govern, and to delegate executive power to such a board is
on the face of it absurd.

Whatever the powers to be granted to the Indian Council, it
is clear that the members should hold office for the space of
only a few years. So rapid is the change that is now making a
nation out of what was ten years ago but a continent inhabited
by an agglomeration of distinct tribes, that no Anglo-Indian
who has left India for ten years is competent even to advise
the rulers, much less himself to share in the ruling of Hindo-
Stan. The objection to the government of India by the
Secretary of State is, that the tenant of the office changes fre-
quently, and is generally ignorant of native feelings and of
Indian affairs. The difficulty, however, which attends the
introduction of a successful plan for the government of India
from London is far from being irremovable, while the objection
to the paternal government of India by a Viceroy is that it
would be wholly opposed to our constitutional theories, unfitted
to introduce into our Indian system those democratic principles
which we have for ten years been striving to implant, and even
in the long run dangerous to our liberties at home.

One reason why the Indian officials cry out against govern-
ment from SL James's Park is, because they deprecate inter-
ference with the Viceroy ; but were the Council abolished, except
as a consultative body, and the Indian Secretaryship of State
made a permanent appointment, it is probable that the Viceroy
would be relieved from that continual and minute inter-
ference with his acts which at present degrades his office in
native eyes. The Viceroy would be left considerable power,
and certainly greater power than he has at present, by the
Secretary of State ; — that which is essential is merely, that the

$$o^ GREATEll HfilTAlX. [curt . xx.

power of control, and responsible control, should lie in London.
The Viceroy would, in practice, exercise the executive functions,
under the control of a Secretary of State advised by an experi-
enced Council and responsible to ^Parliament, and we should
possess a system under which there would be that conjunction
of personal responsibility and of skilled advice which is abso-
lutely required for the gqod government of India.

To a scheme which involves the government of India from at
home, it may be objected, that India cannot be so well under-
stood in London as in Calcutta. So far from this being the.
case, there is but little doubt among those who best know the;
India of to-day, that while men in Calcutta understand the wants
of the Bengalee, and men in Lahore the feelings of the Sikh,;
India, as a whole, is far better understood in England than in
any presidency town. ,

It must be remembered, that with India within a day of Eng-,
land by telegraph, and within three weeks by steam, the old
autocratic Governor-General has become impossible, and day
by day the Secretary of State in London must become more
and more the ruler of India. Were the Secretary of State
appointed for a term of years, and made irremovable except by
a direct vote of the House of Commons, no fault could be found
with the results of the inevitable change : as it is, however, a;
council of advice will hardly be sufficient to prevent gross blun-
dering while we allow India to be ruled by no less than foar
Secretaries of State in a single year.

The chief considerations to be kept in view in the framing of.
a system of government for India are briefly these : a sufficient
separation of the two countries to prevent the clashing of ther
democratic and paternal systems, but, at the same time, a con-
trol over the Indian administration by the English people active
enough to ensure the progressive amelioration of the former j
the minor points to be borne in mind are that in India we, need
less centralization, in London more permanence, and, in both,-
increased personal responsibility. All these requirements are
satisfied by the plan proposed, if it be coupled with the separa-
tion of the English and Indian armies, the employment o|
natives in owr service, and the creation of new governments for
the Indus territories and Assam. Madras, Bombay, Benga^

CllAf. X*3 INDIA. 551

Assam, the Central Provinces, Agra, the Indus, Oude, and
Burmah, would form the nine presidencies, the Viceroy having
the supreme control over our officers in the native States, and
not only should the governors of the last seven be placed upon
the same footing with those of Madras and Bombay, but all the
local governors should be assisted by a council of ministers who
should necessarily be consulted, but whose advice should not be
binding on the governors. The objections that are raised
against councils do not apply to councils that are confined to
the giving of advice, and the ministers are needed, if for no
other purpose, at least to divide the labour of the Governor, for
all our Indian officials are at present overworked.

This is not the place for the suggestion of improvements in
the details of Indian government The statement that all gene-
ral observations upon India are necessarily absurd is not more
true of moral, social, educational, and religious affairs than of
mere governmental matters : " regulation system " and " non-
regulation system ;" " permanent settlement " and " thirty years'
settlement ;" native participation in government, or exclusion of
natives — each of these courses may be good in one part of India
and bad in another. On the whole, however, it may be ad-
mitted, that our Indian government is the best example of a
well-administered despotism, on a large scale, existing in the
world. Its one great fault is over-centralization ; for, although
our rule in India must needs be despotic, no reason can be
shown why its despotism should be minute.

The greatest of the many changes in progress in the East is
that India is being made — that a country is being created under
that name where none has yet existed ; and it is our railroads,
our annexations, and above all our centralising policy, that are
doing the work. There is reason to fear that this change will be
hastened by the extension of our new codes to the former " non-
regulation provinces," and by government from at home, where
India is looked upon as one nation, instead of from Calcutta,
where it is known to be still composed of fifty ; but so rapid is
the change, that already the Calcutta people are as mistaken in
attempting to laugh down our phrase " the people of India," aa
we were during the mutiny, when we believed that there was an
" India" writhing in our clutches. Whether the India which is

5J» QnSAtO&HbrtAlB. [CHA?. x*.

being thus rapidly built up by our own hands will be friendly to
us, or the reverse, depends upon ourselves. The two principles
upon which our administration of the country might be based
have long since been weighed against each other by the English
people, who, rejecting the principle of a holding of India for
the acquisition of prestige and trade, have decided that we are
to govern India in the interest of the people of Hindostan. We
are now called on to deliberate once more, but this time upon
the method by which our principle is to be worked out. That
our administration is already perfect can hardly be contended
so long as no officer not very high in our Indian service dares
to call a native "friend." The first of all our cares must be the
social treatment of the people ; for while by the Queen's pro-
clamation the natives are our fellow-subjects, they are in practice
not yet treated as our fellow-men.

CHAPTER XXI.
DEPENDENCIES.

WHEN, on my way home to England, I found myself off Mocha,
with the Abyssinian highlands in sight, and still more when we
were off Massowah, with the peaks of Talanta plainly visible,
I began to recall the accounts which I had heard at Aden of the
proposed British colony on the Abyssinian table-lands, out of
which the Home Government has since been frightened. The
question of the desirability or the reverse of such a colony
raises points of interest on which it would be advisable that
people at home should at once take up a line.

As it has never been assumed that Englishmen can dwell
permanently, even upon high hills, under the equator, the pro-
position for European colonization or settlement of tropical
Africa may be easily dismissed, but that for the annexation of
tropical countries for trade purposes remains. It has hitherto
been accepted as a general principle regulating our intercourse
with Eastern nations, that we have a moral right to force the
dark-skinned races to treat us in the same fashion as that in
which we are treated by our European neighbours. In practice
we even now go much further than this, and inflict the blessings
of Free Trade upon the reluctant Chinese and Japanese at the
cannon's mouth. It is hard to find any law but that of might
whereby to justify our dealings with Burmah, China, and Japan.
We are apt to wrap ourselves up in our new-found national
morality, and, throwing upon our fathers all the blame of the ill
which has been done in India, to take to ourselves credit for
the good ; but it is obvious to any one who watches the con-
duct of our admirals, consuls, and traders in the China seas,
that it is inevitable that China should fall to us as India fell,

unless there should be a singular change in opinion at home, or
unless, indeed, the Russians should be beforehand with us in
the matter. To say this, is not to settle the disputed question of
whether in the present improved state of feeling, and with the
present control exercised over our Eastern officials by a dis-
interested press at home, and an interested but vigilant press in
India and the Eastern ports, government of China by Britain
might not be for the advantage of the Chinese and the world,
but it is at least open to serious doubt whether it would be to
the advantage of Great Britain. Our ruling classes are already
at least sufficiently exposed to the corrupting influences of
power for us to hesitate before we decide that the widening of
the national mind consequent upon the acquisition of the
government of China would outweigh the danger of a spread at
home of love of absolute authority, and indifference to human
happiness and life.

Although the disadvantages are more evident than the ad-
vantages of the annexation for commercial purposes of such
countries as Abyssinia, China, and Japan, the benefits are
neither few nor hard to find. The abstract injustice of annexa-
tion cannot be said to exist in the case of Abyssinia, as the
sentiment of nationality clearly has no existence there, and
as the worst possible form of British government is better
for the mass of the people than the best conceivable rule
of an Abyssinian chief. The dangers of annexation in the
weakening and corrupting of ourselves may not unfairly be
set off against the blessings of annexation to the people,
and the most serious question for consideration is that of
whether dependencies can be said " to pay." Social progress
is necessary to trade, and we give to mankind the powerful
security of self-interest that we will raise the condition of the
people, and, by means of improved communications, open the
door to civilization.

It may be objected to this statement that our exaggerated
conscientiousness is the very reason why our dependencies
commercially are failures, and why it is useless for us to be
totaling up our loss and profits while we wilfully throw away
the advantages that our energy has placed in our hands. If
India paid as well as Java, it may be shown, we should be re-

CH At. ill.] DEPENDENCIES. 555

ceiving from the East 60 millions sterling a year for the support
"of our European officials in Hindostan, and the total revenue
of India would be 200 or 250 millions, of which 80 millions
would be clear profit for our use in England ; in other words,
Indian profits would relieve us from all taxation i.n England,
and leave us a considerable and increasing margin towards the
abolition of the debt. The Dutch, too, tell us that their system
is more agreeable to the natives than our own clumsy though
well-meant efforts for the improvement of their condition, which,
although not true, is far too near the truth to allow us to rest in
our complacency.

The Dutch system having been well weighed at home, and
deliberately rejected by the English people as tending to the
degradation of the natives, the question remains how far de-
pendencies from which no profits are exacted may be advan-
tageously retained for mere trade purposes. At this moment,
our most flourishing dependencies do not bear so much as their
fair share of the expenses of the empire : — Ceylon herself pays
only the nominal and not the real cost of her defence, and
Mauritius costs nominally ^150,000 a year, and above half a
million really in military expenses, of which the colony is ordered
to pay ^45,000, and grumbles much at paying it. India herself,
although charged with a share of the non-effective expenses of
our army, escapes scot free in war-time, and it is to be remarked
that the throwing upon her of a small portion of the cost of the
Abyssinian war was defended upon every ground except the
true one — namely, that as an integral part of the empire she
ought to bear her share in imperial wars. It is true that, to
make the constitutional doctrine hold, she also ought to be
consulted, and that we have no possible machinery for con-
sulting her — a consideration which of itself shows our Indian
government in its proper light

Whether, indeed, dependencies pay or do not pay their actual
cost, their retention stands on a wholly different footing to that
of colonies. Were we to leave Australia or the Cape, we should
continue to be the chief customers of those countries : were we
to leave India or Ceylon, they would have no customers at all ;
for, falling into anarchy, they would cease at once to export
their goods to us and to consume our manufactures. When a.

jjfe G&EATEtt SK1TA1& {ctu?. xxi.

British Governor of New Zealand wrote that of every Maori
who fell in war with us it might be said that, " from his ignorance,
a man had been destroyed whom a few months' enlightenment
would have rendered a valuable consumer of British manufac-
tured goods," he only set forth with grotesque simplicity con-
siderations which weigh with us all ; but while the advance of
trade may continue to be our chief excuse, it need not be our
sole excuse for our Eastern dealings — even for use towards our-
selves. Without repeating that which I have said with respect
to India, we may especially bear in mind that, although the
theory has suffered from exaggeration, our dependencies still
form a nursery of statesmen and of warriors, and that we should
irresistibly fall into national sluggishness of thought, were it
not for the world-wide interests given us by the necessity of
governing and educating the inhabitants of so vast an empire
as our own.

One of the last of our annexations was close upon our bow as
we passed on our way from Aden up the Red Sea. The French
are always angry when we seize on places in the East, but it is
hardly wonderful that they should have been perplexed about
Perim. This island stands in the narrowest place in the sea, in
the middle of the deep water, and the Suez Canal being a French
work, and Egypt under French influence, our possession of
Perim becomes especially unpleasant to our neighbours. Not
Only this, but the French had determined themselves to seize it,
and their fleet, bound to Perim, put in to Aden to coal. The
Governor had his suspicions, and, having asked the French
admiral to dinner, gave him unexceptionable champagne. The
old gentleman soon began to talk, and directly he mentioned
Perim, the governor sent a pencil-note to the harbour-master to
delay the coaling of the ships, and one to the commander of a
gunboat to embark as many artillerymen and guns as he could
get on board in two hours, and sail for Perim. When the
French reached the anchorage next day, they found the British
flag flying, and a great show of guns in position. Whether
they put into Aden on their way back to France history does
riot say.

Perim is not the only island that lies directly in the shortest,
course for ships, nor are the rocks the only dangers of the

XXL] DEPENDENCIES. 557

Sea. One night about nine o'clock, when we were off the port
of Mecca, I was sitting on the fo'castle, right forward, almost
on the sprit, to catch what breeze we made, when I saw two
country boats about 150 yards on the starboard bow. Our three
lights were so bright that I thought we must be seen, but as the
boats came on across our bows, I gave a shout, which was
instantly followed by " hard a-port 1" from the Chinaman on the
bridge, and by a hundred yells from the suddenly awakened
boatmen. Our helm luckily enough had no time to act upon
the ship. I threw myself down under a stancheon, and the
sail and yard of the leading boat fell on our deck close to my
head, and the boats shot past us amid shouts of "fire," caused
by the ringing of the alarm bell. When we had stopped the
ship, the question came — had we sunk the boat ? We at once
piped away the gig, with a Malay crew, and sent it off to look
for the poor wretches — but after half-an-hour, we found them
ourselves, and found them safe except for their loss of canvas,
and their terrible fright. Our pilot questioned them in Arabic,
and discovered that each boat had on board 100 pilgrims ; but
they excused themselves for not having a watch or light by
saying that they had not seen us ! Between rocks and pilgrim-
boats, Red Sea navigation is hard enough, and it is easy to see
which way its difficulties will cause the scale to turn when the
question lies between Euphrates Railway and Suez Canal

GREATER BRITAIS. [CHAP.

CHAPTER XXII.
THE SECOND EMPIRE IN THE EAST.

IT is no longer possible to see the Pyramids or even Heliopolis
in the solitary and solemn fashion in which they should be
approached. English " going out " and " coming home " are
there at all days and hours, and the hundreds of Arabs selling
German coins and mummies of English manufacture are terribly
out of place upon the desert. I went alone to see the Sphinx,
and, sitting down on the sand, tried my best to read the riddle
of the face, and to look through the rude carving into the inner
mystery ; but it would not do, and I came away bitterly disap-
pointed. In this modern democratic railway-girt world of ours,
the ancient has no place ; the huge Pyramids may remain for
ever, but we can no longer read them. A few months may see
a cafe cJiantant at their base.

Cairo itself is no pleasant sight. An air of dirt and degrada-
tion hangs over the whole town, and clings to its people, from
the donkey-boys and comfit-sellers to the pipe-smoking soldieis
and the money-changers who squat behind their trays. The
wretched fellaheen, or Egyptian peasantry, are apparently the
most miserable of human beings, and their slouching shamble
is a sad sight after the superb gait of the Hindoos. The slave-
market of Cairo has done its work ; indeed, it is astonishing
that the English should content themselves with a treaty in
which the abolition of slavery in Egypt is decreed, and not take
a single step to secure its execution, while the slave-market in
Cairo continues to be all but open to the passer. That the
Egyptian Government could put down slavery if it had the will,

* This chapter is not applicable to the state of things now existing, but
that which has been before may be again in other fields.

CHAP, xxii.] THE SECOND EMPIRE IN THE EAST. 559

cannot be doubted by those who have witnessed the rapidity
with which its officers act in visiting doubtful crimes upon the
wrong men. During my week's stay in Alexandria, two such
cases came to my notice : — in the first, one of my fellow pas-
sengers insulted two of the Albanian police, and was shot at by
one of them (or thought he was) with a long pistol. A number
of Englishmen, gathering from the public gaming-houses on the
great square, rescued him, and beat off the cavasses ; and the
next morning, marched down to their consulate and demanded
justice. Our acting consul went straight to the head of the
police, laid the case before him, and procured the condemnation
to the galleys for ten years of the man who was said to have
fired the shot, while the policeman who had looked on was
immediately bastinadoed in the presence of the passenger. The
other case was one of robbery at a desert village, from the tent
of an English traveller. When he complained to the sheik, the
order was given to bastinado the head men, and hold them
responsible for the amount The head men in turn gave the
stick to the householders, and claimed the sum from them :
while these bastinadoed the vagrants, and actually obtained
from them the money. Every male inhabitant having thus
received the stick, it is probable that the actual culprit was
reached, if, indeed, he lived within the village. " Stick-back-
sheesh " is a great institution in Egypt, but the Turks are not
far behind. When the British Consulate at Bussorah was
attacked by thieves some years ago, our Consul telegraphed the
fact to the Pacha of Bagdad. The answer came at once : —
" Bastinado forty men" — and bastinadoed they were, as soon as
they had been selected at random from the population.

Coming to Egypt from India, the Englishman is inclined to
believe that, while our Indian Government is an averagely suc-
cessful despotism, Egypt is misgoverned in an extraordinary
degree. As a matter of fact, however, it is not fair to the King
of Egypt that we should compare his rule with ours in India,
and it is probable that his government is not on the whole
worse than Eastern despotisms always are. Setting up as a
" civilized ruler," the King of Egypt performs the duties of his
position by buying guns which he uses in putting down insur-
rections that he has fomented, and yachts for which he has no

$60 GPEATEE BRITAIN. [CHAP. xxn.

need ; and he appears to think that he has done all that Peter
of Russia himself could have accomplished, when he sends a
young Egyptian to Manchester to learn the cotton trade, or to
London to acquire the principles of foreign commerce, and, on
his return to Alexandria, sets him to manage the soap-works, or
to conduct the viceregal band. The aping of the forms of
" Western civilization," which in Egypt means French vice,
makes the Court of Alexandria look worse than it is : — we
expect the slave-market and the harem in the East, but the
King of Egypt superadds the Trianon, and a bad imitation of
Mabile.

The Court influence shows itself in the actions of the people,
or rather the influence at work upon the Court is pressing also
upon the people. For knavery, no place can touch the modern
Alexandria. One word, however, is far from describing all the
infamies of the city. It surpasses Cologne for smells, Benares
for pests, Saratoga for gaming, Paris itself for vice. There is a
layer of French "civilization" of the worst kind over the semi-
barbarism of Cairo ; but still the town is chiefly Oriental.
Alexandria, on the other hand, is completely Europeanized,
and has a white population of seventy or eighty thousand.
The Arabs are kept in a huge village outside the fortifications,
and French is the only language spoken in the hotels and
shops.

It is evident enough that the Suez Canal scheme has been
from the beginning a blind for the occupation of Egypt by
France, and that, however interesting to the shareholders may
be the question of its physical or commercial success, the pro-
babilities of failure have had but little weight with the French
Government. The foundation of the Messagerie Company with
national capital, to carry imaginary mails, secured the prepon-
derance of French influence in the towns of Egypt, and it is
not certain that we should not look upon the occupation of
Saigon itself as a mere blind.

Of the temporary success of the French policy there can be
no doubt: the English railway guards have lately been dismissed
from the Government railway line, and a huge tricolour floats
from the entrance to the new docks at Suez, while a still more
gigantic one waves over the hotel j the King of Egypt, glad to

. xxrt.] THE SECOND EMPlttE Iff THE EAST. <6i

•

find a third Power which he can play off, when necessary,
against both England and Russia, takes shares in the canal. It
is when we ask, " What is the end that the French have in
view ?" that we find it strangely small by the side of the means.
The French of the present day appear to have no foreign
policy, unless it is a sort of desire to extend the empire of their
language, their dance-tunes, and their fashions ; and the natural
wish of their ruler to engage in no enterprise that will outlast
his life prevents their having any such permanent policy as that
of Russia or the United States. An Egyptian Pacha hardly put
the truth too strongly when he said, " There is nothing perma-
nent about France except Mabile."

The Suez Canal is being pushed with vigour, although the
labour of the hundreds of Greek and Italian navvies is very
different to that of the tens of thousands of impressed fellaheen.
The withdrawal from the Company of the forced labour of the
peasants has demonstrated that the King is at heart not well-
disposed towards the scheme, for the remonstrances of England
have never prevented the employment of slave labour upon
works out of which there was money to be made for the vice-
regal purse. The difficulty of clearing and keeping clear the
channel at Port Said, at the Mediterranean end, is well known
to the Pacha and his engineers : — it is not difficult, indeed, to
cut through the bar, nor impossible to keep the cutting open,
but the effect of the great piers will merely be to push the Nile
silt farther seawards, and again and again new bars will form
in front of the canal. That the canal is physically possible no
one doubts, but it is hard to believe that it can pay. Even if
we suppose, moreover, that the canal will prove a complete
success, the French Government will only find that it has spent
millions upon digging a canal for England's use.

The neutralization of Egypt has lately been proposed by
writers of the Comtist school, but to what end is far from clear.
" The interests of civilization " are the pretext, but when
summoned by a Comtist, " civilization " and " humanity " gene-
rally appear in a French shape. Were we to be attacked in
India by the French or Russians, no neutralization would pre-
vent our sending our troops to India by the shortest road, and
fighting wherever we thought best If we were not so attacked,

2 0

56 a GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xxn.

neutralization, as far as we are concerned, would be a useless
ceremony. If France goes beyond her customary meddlesome-
ness and settles down in Egypt, we shall evidently have to dis-
lodge her, but to neutralize the country would be to settle het
there ourselves. It would be idle to deny that the position of
France in the East is connected with the claim put forth by her
to the moral leadership of the world. The " chief power of
Europe " and " leader of Christendom " must needs be impatient
of the dominance of America in the Pacific and of Britain in
the East, and seeks by successes on the side of India to bury
the memories of Mexico. One of the hundred "missions of
France," one of the thousand "Imperial ideas," is the "regene-
ration of the East." Treacherous England is to be confined to
her single island, and barbarous Russia to be shut up in the
Siberian snows. England may be left to answer for herself, but
before we surrender even Russia to the Comtist priests, we
should remember that, just as the Russian despotism is dangerous
to the world from the stupidity of its barbarism, so the French
democracy is dangerous through its feverish sympathies, blunder-
ing " humanity," and unlimited ambition.

The present reaction against exaggerated nationalism is
in itself a sign that our national mind is in a healthy state ;
but, while we distrust nationalism because it is illogical and
narrow, we must remember that " cosmopolitanism " has been
made the excuse for childish absurdities, and a cloak for des-
perate schemes. Love of race, among the English, rests upon
a firmer base than either love of mankind or love of Britain, for it
reposes upon a subsoil of things known : the ascertained virtues
and powers of the English people. For nations such as France
and Spain, with few cares outside their European territories,
national fields for action are, perhaps, too narrow, and the
interests of even the vast territories inhabited by the English
race may, in a less degree, be too small for English thought ;
but there is India, — and the responsibility of the absolute
government of a quarter of the human race is no small thing.
If we strive to advance ourselves in the love of truth, to act
justly towards Ireland, and to govern India aright, we shall have
enough of work to occupy us for many years to come, and shall
leave a greater name in history than if we concerned ourselves

CBAK xxii.] COND EMPIRE IN THE EAST. 563

with settling the affairs of Poland. If we need a wider range
for our sympathies than that which even India will supply, we
may find it in our friendships with the other sections of the race ;
and if, unhappily, one result of the present awakening of England
to free life should be a return of the desire to meddle in the
affairs of other folk, we shall find a better outlet for our energy
in aiding our Teutonic brethren in their struggle for unity than
in assisting Imperial France to spread Benoitonisme through
the world.

•

Z O 2

5 64

CHAPTER XXIII.
THE ENGLISH.

IN America we have seen the struggle of the dear races against
the cheap — the endeavours of the English to hold their own
against the Irish and Chinese. In New Zealand, we found the
stronger and more energetic race pushing from the earth the
shrewd and laborious descendants of the Asian Malays; in
Australia, the English triumphant, and the cheaper races
excluded from the soil not by distance merely, but by arbitrary
legislation ; in India, we saw the solution of the problem of the
officering of the cheaper by the dearer race. Everywhere we
have found that the difficulties which impede the progress to
universal dominion of the English people lie in the conflict with
the cheaper races. The result of our survey is such as to give
us reason for the belief that race distinctions will long continue,
that miscegenation will go but little way towards blending
races ; that the dearer are, on the whole, likely to destroy the
cheaper peoples, and that Saxondom will rise triumphant from
the doubtful struggle.

The countries ruled by a race whose very scum and outcasts
have founded empires in every portion of the globe, even now
consist of 9^ millions of square miles, and contain a population
of 300 millions of people. Their surface is five times as great
as that of the empire of Darius, and four and a half times as
large as the Roman Empire at its greatest extent. It is no
exaggeration to say that in power the English countries would
be more than a match for the remaining nations of the world,
whom in the intelligence of their people and the extent and
wealth of their dominion's they already considerably surpass.
Russia gains ground steadily, we are told, but so do we. If we
take maps of the English-governed countries and of the Russian
countries of fifty years ago, and compare them with the English

CHAP, xxin.] THE ENGLISH. 565

and Russian countries of to-day, we find that the Saxon has out-
stripped the Muscovite in conquest and in colonization. The
extensions of the United States alone are equal to all those of
.Russia. Chili, La Plata, and Peru must eventually become
English : the Red Indian race that now occupies those countrie?
cannot stand against our colonists ; and the future of the table
lands of Africa and that of Japan and of China is as clear. Even
in the tropical plains, the negroes alone seem able to withstand
us. No possible series of events can prevent the English race
itself in 1970 numbering 300 millions of beings — of one national
character and one tongue. Italy, Spain, France, Russia become
pigmies by the side of such a people.

Many who are well aware of the power of the English nations
are nevertheless disposed to believe that our own is morally,
as well as physically, the least powerful of the sections of the
race, or, in other words, that we are overshadowed by America
and Australia. The rise to power of our southern colonies is,
however distant, and an alliance between ourselves and America
is still one to be made on equal terms. Although we are forced
to contemplate the speedy loss of our manufacturing supremacy
as coal becomes cheaper in America and dearer in Old England,
we have nevertheless as much to bestow on America as she has
to confer on us. The possession of India offers to ourselves
that element of vastness of dominion which, in this age, is needed
to secure width of thought and nobility of purpose; but to
the English race our possession of India, of the coasts of Africa,
and of the ports of China offers the possibility of planting free
institutions among the dark-skinned races of the world.

The ultimate future of any one section of our race, however,
is of little moment by the side of its triumph as a whole, but the
power of English laws and English principles of government is
not merely an English question — its continuance is essential to
the freedom of mankind.

Steaming up from Alexandria along the coasts of Crete and
Arcadia, and through the Ionian Archipelago, I reached Brin-
disi, and thence passed on through Milan towards home. This
is the route that our Indian mails should take until the Euphrates
road is m9.de,*

* They ROW do take iu

BRITAIN. [CHAP.

CHAPTER XXIV.

r.y~'. '' : ' :•-'.:.'.. - • '. ... ;

ENGLISH INFLUENCE IN JAPAN.*

*4'*:,": >'•"*': i • .

WHO are the men who made the Japanese revolution, and who
now maintain and defend its .principles ?

What are the chances of the popularity of the Japanese
revolution continuing ?

What, then, will be the duration of the present settled order
of things; and, .will English ideas continue for an indefinite
period to gain ground in the country of the Rising Sun ?

These are questions much oftener asked than answered,
although the actual history of the Japanese Revolution is to be
found recorded in a great number of books.
, The first question — like many questions about Japan — can
be more easily answered negatively than positively. The
revolution was not made by any one man, nor by any very small
group of men. The Emperor, formerly known as the Mikado,,
in whose name it was made, and by ,the influence of the,
Authority of whose name its principles are still protected, had
no share whatever in its conception or execution. That which
.was nominally a revolution of the Daimios, was in fact a
revolution of their councillors. Each Daimio was assisted — or,
rather, controlled, in the government of his feudal province
by a small council chosen from among his retainers. The
members of these councils were, as a rule, selected for ability
by the council itself. They drew but little pay, and in their
manner of life were not to be distinguished from the other
retainers of the feudal prince. It is but little known that
Daimios and their councillors alike hated the Tycoons. I will
assume that my readers understand the position which had
jbeen held for five hundred years by these mayors of the palace,
who supported the Mikado, in whose name they ruled, by a

* Published in the Fortnightly JKwitW as an "Additional Chapter foi
Greater Britain/'

CHAP, xxiv.] ENGLISH INFLUENCE IN JAPAN. 567

dole of twenty thousand pounds a year for the maintenance of
the court at the ancient capital. The revolution had, of course,
to be made in the Mikado's name; but it was not to be
expected that a god-king, who had never been outside his
palace, and who had never, according to many, set foot to
earth even within his palace walls, would have the energy or
develop the power to take a leading part in the revolutionary
movement. During the revolution the Mikado, gifted as he
is with a gentle and fair disposition, acted as he has acted
since, namely by approving without hesitation, although with
actual knowledge, of everything done in his name. His
present position as Emperor was expressed to me by a Japanese
gentleman in these words — " He never says ' No,' only ' Yes, ' "
— a sentence which would doubtless gratify the heart of Earl
Russell. Made in this man's name, the revolution was carried
through by the councillors of the Daimios, with the approval of
their patrons. The Tycoon's Government had never been
popular with the Daimios. All Japanese history is a record of
their partial rebellions. Since Commodore Perry's landing on
the coast of Japan, the Tycoons had happened to be haughty
men, who had given more than usual offence to the feudal
princes, while the presence of the foreigner had caused the war
exactions to press more heavily upon them, and at the same time
had excited the agricultural population. All these facts told one
way, and behind the Daimios were the ablest of their councillors,
who saw in revolution not only a great career for themselves, but
also a chance of a brilliant future for that country which almost
every Japanese loves more than he loves life. The Satsuma
andChoshiu clans were the strongest that took part in the revo-
lution ; but that it was the councillors, and not the prince who
really led, is clear when we remember that the reigning prince of
Satsuma was a child, and the reigning prince of Choshiu a fool.
The revolution is sometimes said to have been directed
against foreign influence. Foreign influence was a pretext.
Some of the murders of foreigners by armed retainers of the
feudal nobles were caused by a breach of Japanese etiquette by
the victims, but most of the attacks are now known to have
been made out of a fixed purpose of embroiling the Tycoon

$68 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xxiv.

with his foreign friends. The revolutionary leaders knew, as
well as the Tycoon knew, that the foreign influence was certain
to endure ; and on the other hand, in spite of the Queen's
presents to the Tycoon, Sir Harry Parkes was more friendly to
the revolution than he was to the government at the capital.
Okubo, the present prime minister, and his leading colleagues
were councillors of Daimios. Contrary to the prevailing
English belief, there has been no change of government in
Japan since the revolution, although there has been a certain
shifting of persons. The men who had made the armed revolu-
tion still direct that strange, peaceful revolutionary government,
which quietly rules Japan on revolutionary principles through
despotic forms, and in the name of a heaven-descended Mikado
encircled by a halo of all but actual divinity.

" But Iwakura," say some, who have heard or read a little of
Japanese politics, " Iwakura, the foreign minister, who for a
time was here, and Shimadzu Saburo, the great conservative
chief— have not they held power, or rather fallen from it?"
No. Iwakura was a courtier. A " courtier " in Japan meant
one of the poetic, highly cultured, but un-energetic men,
who surrounded the Mikado in his seclusion in the ancient
capital. He was the ablest of the courtiers, and was valuable
to the revolution through his station ; but the courtiers, so far
as they have been used, have been the instruments of those
able, pushing democrats, the former councillors of the feudal
barons. What energy can be hoped for in men, however
talented and however learned, who were the courtiers of a god-
king, immured in that cathedral city of the East, the ancient
capital, formerly Miako, and now Kiyoto — for even capitals
change their names every few years in the revolutionary land of
Japan ? As for Shimadzu Saburo, on the other hand, he is the
uncle of the young prince ofSatsuma, who is at the head of the
most powerful of the clans. That is to say, he is the foremost
man among the Scotchmen of Japan. It happens that he is a
Scotch Tory, while most of his clan are Radicals — still, he is
the first man of that people who fill every office, military or
civil, for which they have a candidate ready. There are not
very many of them, but their numbers seem to be the only
limit to the places whigh they hold.. Shjmadzu's brother, \\\q

CHAP, xxiv.] ENGLISH INFLUENCE IN JAPAN. 569

late prince of Satsuma, who died, I think, just before the revo-
lution, was a man so able that, had he lived, he would perhaps
have changed the whole future of his country. Living as he
did in pre-revolutionary days, he had to confine himself to
manufacturing Bohemian glass, building steamboats without
foreign aid, and setting up a telegraph line in his own county.
But even as singular an event as the rule of an ex-Daimio may
come to pass in Japan. Since his fall the ex-Tycoon — a very
able man — has spent his time in shooting and sketching after
the manner of his ancestors ; but it is now beginning to be
rumoured that it is far from improbable that the ex-Tycoon,
who ten years ago was called by us the Emperor of Japan, may
one of these days accept office in the revolutionary government
carried on in the name of the Mikado. Shimadzu Saburo is so
violent a Tory that he is exposed to much ridicule in Japan.
In 1874 his time was taken up with writing a book called
" Bemmo," an elaborate attack on Christianity, which has been
translated into English, but of which I saw the Japanese
edition, with cuts of all the Christian miracles. In 1875 ^e
again turned his attention to politics. The edict against
officials having their heads shaved had no fiercer opponent.
He was a member of the council of state, and the day after the
first intimation of the desire of the Government that officials
should wear European dress appeared, he came down to the
council with the hair of the sides of the scalp more firmly
gummed up over the shaven part than ever, with one coolie to
carry a mat for him to sit on among his colleagues (who of
course were all seated in high velvet chairs,) another coolie to
carry his pipe, and a third coolie to pull out over his feet the
brocaded trousers, which train behind a Japanese gentleman of
the old school. He became in the course of the year exceed-
ingly dissatisfied with the Government While I was in Japan,
in the autumn, he made a great speech at the council in favour
of war with the Corea, which he advocated chiefly for the
purpose, he said, of giving employment to the late Samurai, or
two-sworded followers of the Daimios. Of this dangerous class
he is the accepted representative. When the Government
decided to try and settle the Corean difficulty by peaceful
means, ghirna-dgu resigned his membership of the council.

570 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xxrv.

Eight general officers in the army, all belonging to the Satsuma
clan, resigned on the same night, and the Government expected
a rising in the southern provinces. None took place, but it would
not have been unwelcome to the men in power at the capital.
They believe that the army can be trusted, and that any Con-
servative rising can be put down,* while the opportunity would
be taken to carry out some rather dangerous reforms. At the
same time, as most of the superior officers in the army, from the
commander-in-chief downwards, are Satsuma men, the confidence
of the Government in the forces of the Mikado shows that
Japanese patriotism must be stronger than any local feeling in the
minds of the most distinguished of Shimadzu's fellow clansmen.
Such is the Radicalism of the Mikado's Government, that any
Englishman, whatever may be his politics, cannot fail to feel
much sympathy with the Japanese Conservatives. The
students trained in England and America must be personally
offensive to them in the highest degree, and many of the acts
of the Government which are, I am bound to say, regarded
with indifference by the people, display a want of reverence
for the past which can only be described as shameless. The
selling for old metal of some of the most important monumental
bronzes in the world, was nominally, in many cases, the act of
the priests. In some cases it was undoubtedly the act of the
Government itself, and the Government could at once have put
a stop to the practice, had it chosen to do so. I have it upon
very high authority, that the Government proposed to sell Dai-
Butz, a bronze and silver Buddha, sixty feet high, which is
unequalled in Eastern religious art, and that, this act of
Vandalism was prevented only by the interference of some of
the foreign ministers. I may add that the "guardian figures "
at the gates of the Temple at Kamakura, where the great
Buddha stands, were destroyed by fire, and such has been the
decline of religious sentiment among the people, that they
could only be restored by a subscription among the European
residents at Yokohama! The Japanese Government are
suspected of a strong wish to destroy the tombs of the Tycoons
at Tokio (formerly Yeddo), where there is another magnificent
relic of the past, the Loo Choo gates, bronze doors set up out
" This has since happened.

CHAP. xxiY.j ENGLISH INFLUENCE IN JAPAN. . 571

of moneys paid as tribute by Loo Choo to Japan in the Middle
Ages. All these monuments of which I have spoken are
Buddhist, and Buddhism is the religion of two-thirds of the
inhabitants of Japan ; but it is not the established creed, which
is the mysterious pure Shintoo. The greatest temple in the
capital was burnt down some years ago, and the incendiaries
•were hanged in 1875, while I was in Japan. They were
Buddhist priests, and had destroyed their temple because it
had been " purified " by order of the Government — i.e., converted
into a Shintoo temple. The Government state that they have
not confiscated Buddhist temples, but have only "purified"
those which had been Shintoo, and which, under the influence of
the Tycoons, had become Buddhist — for the Tycoons belonged
to the faith of the majority, and not to the faith of the Mikado.
To show how radical is the Government of Japan, and how
utterly disregardful of vested rights where public interests are
at stake, I will refer to a matter in which a change is about to
be made, which would hardly be approved, except under the
pressure of desperate necessity, by western Radicals. The
retainers, now strong and poor, while their ex-masters are weak
arid rich, are going to plunder them for the benefit of the
"fatherland. At the time when the revolution was made, the
great sagacity of the leading men led them to patch up every-
thing for a time. To the ex-Tycoon was given a province,,
which has since been taken from him. To the Daimios was
given one-tenth of their former incomes, free of every kind of
charge, so that Satsuma, for instance, who had had an army
and a fleet to keep up, and a province to rule, out of eight
hundred thousand pounds a year, has received eighty thousand
pounds a year to play with, ever since the revolution. The
retainers got nothing, except some posts, and those who were
not sufficiently clever .or instructed to become officers, civil or
military, have had to earn their living by dragging miniature
hansoms about the streets, and in some cases have begged their
bread. Taxation now begins to press ; the Government is poor
in proportion to its wants, and the result is that, although they
"were only fixed six or seven years ago, the pensions of the
Daimios are to be reduced. It is perfectly safe to take this step,
and the European-trained Japanese regard with astonishment a

57» GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xxiv.

stranger who asks any other question in relation to the proposed
change. If you hint that it is not, perhaps, quite just, the
answer at once is, " These persons do nothing whatever for the
money they receive." At the same time, such is the astonishing
strength of patriotism in Japan, that it is very possible that when
the ex-Daimios are told that they must pay for the perfecting
of the revolution, they will cheerfully and willingly submit.

An inspection of the Japanese "new Doomsday-Book"
shows that some, at all events, of the Daimios are not " doing
nothing " in all senses, for some of the names may be recognized
as those of men who are working hard to enable themselves to
take a place among those of their countrymen who are masters
of the foreign learning. The gentleman who, but for the
revolution, would have been Prince of Awa, is an undergraduate
at Oxford. His income is returned at £"25,000 a year. The
ex-Prince of Hizan, whose income is returned at .£35,000 a
year, is living in London with his family. His territorial title,
and that of Satsuma, are not the only ones on the list which are
dear to lovers of oriental ware. " Kanga," with his £"90,000 a
year, is suggestive of red and gold. There are about thirty
ex-Daimios, who have, at present, incomes of over .£20,000 a
year a-piece, but all are now pensioners of the State. Their
names appear in a pension list, and the total amount voted
under the head of pensions is £2,800,000 a year. This is a
large item in the accounts of Japan. The revenue and the
expenditure of the country each stands at £"9,000,000 and odd.
The pensions are half as much again as the military expenditure,
five times the cost of the navy, and five times the interest on
the debt. The country is democratically organized, although
under despotic forms. Money is wanted on all sides for the
splendidly efficient services which have been set on foot In
army, navy, education, post-office, lighthouses, railroads,
statistics, Japan wants to be on a level with the European
world. Money must be found. On the other hand, trade
is rather decreasing than increasing; tea and silk are the
chief exports, and Japanese tea is peculiar, and does not
easily find new markets, while the growth of the silk trade in
Italy is doing serious damage to Japan. Under these circum-
ftances, it is not strange that there should be an outcry fpr the

CHAP, xxiv.] ENGLISH INFLUENCE IN JAPAN.

reduction of the pensions. There would be such an outcry in
all countries, but in Europe it would be without result. In
Japan the reduction of the Daimios' pensions will probably take
place. Okuma, the finance minister, is a clever man, but what
can he do? Public opinion bids him fall upon the nobles.
Their pensions, it must be observed, are already liable to
taxation, and they have been reached by the heavy income tax,
which took about a tenth of their incomes last year.

There is but one new commercial prospect that seems
opening for Japan. The Government is at present engaged
on a praiseworthy attempt to introduce sheep, with the view of
converting the hills into pasture land. If this can ever be done,
the population and the wealth of Japan may be enormously
increased. The hills cover two-thirds of the country; the
forests that once stood on them have all been cut, not a stick
of timber has been planted, and no use whatever is made of
the mountain tracts.

There are t-*»o points arising out of the matters I have just
mentioned, in which Japan stands before the average of
European powers ; and one in which she stands at least before
some — her finance accounts may be taken without suspicion.
The services in which Japan stands so well are lighthouses and
post-offices. I have before me as I write the annual report of
the Postmaster-General for 1875. The foreign post-office
service was first introduced into Japan for trial on one road
only in 1871. In four years Japan has beaten Denmark,
Norway, Sweden, Turkey, and Greece. Three thousand five
hundred post-offices have been already opened, and the increase
of letters posted is at the rate of fifty per cent, a year. As the
Postmaster-General says in his report, u The enormous increase
of fifty-six per cent, on die revenue of the preceding year is
due. . . to the rapid progress of civilisation." He may well
call the progress extraordinary, and the chief factor in pro-
ducing the result has been the personal cleverness of the
Japanese people. Let any one sit down with books alone to
make a steam engine, and he will have some idea of the
quickness to learn foreign arts which the Japanese display.
The present minister for foreign affairs, as well as the late
Prince of Satsuma, constructed engines in this manner. Every

574 QttBAfER SttWAtlt. [cnA*.

element of foreign civilisation has been introduced into Japan
with the latest improvements which it has received. The
Japanese, very properly, will have everything of the best, and
their lighthouse system may be taken as an , example. They
already have thirty-three lighthouses at work, which are models
to any country in the world.

All these services cost money, and there still may come a
conservative reaction to the cry of " keeping down the rates."
To hang the whole of the students who have been educated
abroad, to restore their swords to the Samurai, and to strip the
guards of their tunics and kepis, and give them back their
armour of ten years ago, is a policy which may commend itself
to Shimadzu Saburo, but is not within the bounds of possibility.
The land-tax has increased, but the people are still on the
whole contented, and their rulers are sufficiently clever to
watch the signs of the times, and to be guided by public
opinion. There are some Europeans living in Japan who hold
the opposite view. Groaning under the somewhat ignorant
Radicalism of the newly appointed local officials, they will tell
you that the country has become a " prig's paradise," and that
the reform movement will be at least checked, if not wholly
suspended, by a return to power of the old feudal chiefs. They
point out that in the powerful southern province, or as it might
rather be called, the feudal and tributary kingdom of Satsuma,
the Mikado's officers possess but little power, and they believe
that the attitude of the Prince of Satsuma towards the Mikado
may at any moment become that of the Dukes of Burgundy
towards the Kings of France. The " Pakeha-Maories " of this
part of the world, the English Japanese, who, having lived ten
years at Yokohama, think that they can tell " modern Kiyoto "
from " old Satsuma," will assure you that the reform movement
fails to perform that which it has promised, and that it cannot
give efficient government because of the state of the finances.
All that I can say upon the point is that everywhere in Japan
the traveller sees all the outward signs of good government, the
only exception — the state of the bridges— not being important
in a country where there are hardly any horses, and hardly any
heavy vehicles. When war with Corea was threatened in the
autumn of last year, the Nichi Nichi Shinbun, one of the

«uf. lit*.] MO LlSlt INFLUENCE Of JAPAN. 573

native newspapers of the capital, spoke of the Government as
likely to go into a foreign war in order to stifle discontent at
home, and called this " the fatal policy of Napoleon III." The
answer is that the Government did not go to war, but, on the
contrary, successfully resisted the strong pressure which was
put upon it by the war party : and those among the foreign
ministers who know the country best believe that there is little
reason to fear for the future of Japan.

My mention just now of the post-office reminds me of one
of the grievances of the Japanese against this country, the
existence of which is a slight bar to our influence becoming
even greater than it is at present. Why should England
refuse to follow the United States into a postal convention
with Japan, and to accord her a position which we give to a
backward country like Greece ? Under so honest and careful
a government as the Japanese, the retention of our separate
post-office at Yokohama is a blunder almost fit to rank with
the want of courtesy shown in connection with the monstrous
claim of sporting rights in Japan set up by British subjects and
backed by British power. I should go so far as to believe that
extra-territoriality itself might with safety be given up in Japan.
The Japanese would then allow foreigners to reside anywhere
in the country, the splendid mines would then be worked with
foreign capital and under foreign direction, to the benefit both
of Japan and Great Britain. As I have named the mineral
wealth of the country, in which lies her future chance of an
extended trade, let me explain that there is scarcely a part of
the empire which does not contain minerals. Coal is plentiful
in the north ; gold, copper, tin, lead, iron, iron sand, plumbago,
antimony, copperas, cobalt and sulphur are abundant; there
is much marble, rock-salt, amber, fire-clay, porcelain-clay,
petroleum, alum, rock-crystal, and some silver. With the
exception of coal, these minerals are scattered all over the
southern islands. Without going so far, however, as at present
to give up extra-territoriality, there is much that could be done
in the removal of small causes of irritation. Fuss, fidget, and
bluster are not the best means of making friends with a young
power, whose help in the North Pacific we may one day need.
As an example of our less pleasant dealings with the Japanese,

Sttl'tAlN.

let me quote the heads of the shooting question. Englishmen,
in the pursuit of their favourite amusement of shooting all over
the country, have at times killed poultry, and slightly wounded
inhabitants. The Japanese Government, rightly careful of the
lives and property of its subjects, not unnaturally objected,
and proposed a system of shooting regulations combined with
game laws, which was acknowledged to be reasonable. The
Government offered to do the police work necessary for the
enforcement of the game laws to protect English sport, and
they consented that offences under them should be heard by
the foreign consular courts, but they asked that a table of fines
should be agreed on beforehand, so as to secure uniform
treatment for all foreigners, and that these fines should go to
the Government to recognise its right, and to compensate the
informers. In the only other similar case of penalties inflicted.
on foreigners — namely, fines under customs regulations — the
fines are specially fixed for all foreigners, and go to the
Japanese Government. The Japanese only asked that this pre-
cedent should be followed. All the powers, except England,
offered to concede the point, but we appear to expect that the
Japanese shall find shooting for England and protect it by game
laws, and that the paltry fines shall go to England, who is thus
to benefit by the acts of her own criminals.

I named just now, as one reason for our trying to extend
our already great influence in Japan, the possibility that a time
will come when Japan might be a useful ally to us in the
North Pacific. Such is the efficiency of the Japanese forces
that a mere statement of their number should be accompanied
with a reminder of their serious value. Their navy employs
4,214 men, all drilled under English instructors. All Japanese
are liable to military service in the army, but the actual regular
force — the whole of which would have been landed on the
coast of China from seven to ten days after the declaration of
war, had not war been prevented by the action of Sir T. F.
Wade, two years ago — consists, on a war footing, of 49,930
men. On a peace footing, the army consists of 35,320 men,
of whom 2,460 are artillery, 1,230 engineers, 440 military train,
720 garrison troops, and 30,080 infantry, including the imperial
guard. There is only one regiment of cavalry. The effective-

CHAP, xxiv.] ENGLISH INFLUENCE IN JAPAN. 577

ness of ttie Japanese army is immensely increased by the fact
that the great steam navigation company which owns some
of the finest steamers in the world, is only the Japanese
Government under another name, and the whole of the ships
running to Shanghai are liable at a moment's notice to be used
for the conveyance of troops. There can be little doubt that,
had war broken out between China and Japan two years ago,
the Japanese would have taken Pekin ; although, looking to the
fact that the population of Japan is but little over 33,000,000,
it is possible that Pekin would have proved a Moscow.

There is one future suggested by the military statistics I have
just given, which would be even brighter than that of having
Japan for our firm friend in the Pacific. Shall I be accused of
dreaming dreams if I ask whether it would not be a happy
thing that the Pacific should be neutralised ? The states at
present bordering upon that ocean, or wholly situated within
its limits, have not yet followed those of Europe into reckless
military expenditure. Japan is entering upon that course;
and can we blame her when we remember the perpetual
presence of a Russian squadron upon her coasts ? Australia
has no army, America desires no triumph of the sword, and
Russia alone of all the Pacific powers is suspected of ambitious
designs. Would it not be possible to induce the European
Powers to agree to support the status quo in the Pacific, and to
recommend the island Powers of that ocean to put down their
armies, and apply their revenues to public works and purposes
of trade, of art, and of civilisation ?

I have answered, as well as I can, the questions with which
I set out, but it is impossible to satisfy even one's self as to the
accuracy of statements which concern so strange a country
as Japan. What can be, or ever has been, in the history of
the world, more singular than the combination of the extreme
democracy of the spirit of its government with the blind
tradition that is personified in the Mikado ? I said above that
the Mikado had taken but little part in public affairs. The
marvellous fact is that, in so revolutionary a country, he should
be there at all. His ancestors have reigned for 2,536 years
at least, and his style, with magnificent simplicity, runs
" Mutsuhito, by the grace of Heaven, Emperor of Japan,

2 P

573 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xxiv.

seated on a throne occupied by one dynasty from time
immemorial."

I ought to explain what I mean by the phrase, " English
influence in Japan." The diplomatic power of the English
Government is perhaps greater than that of any other single
foreign country at the court of Tokio, but it is not overwhelm-
ing ; and were I thinking of it alone I should not speak of the
English influence in Japan in the very strong terms that I have
used. Japan plays off America against the European Powers,
and by the spread of Russian dominion in Saghalien and
towards the Corea, Japan is brought into close relations with
a state the diplomacy of which has always been superior to
that of England, and which is represented at Tokio by Mr.
Struve, the once-dreaded secretary of the Government of
Turkestan, who has never shown his great talent more clearly
than in persuading the English community in Yokohama, and
his colleagues at the capital, that garden patties are his only
thought. Thus the English diplomatic influence, although the
greatest, does not stand alone. In the organization of the
services of Japan, the English do not take even the first place,
for the French have the law and the army (though a change is
being made), while the English have to themselves only the
navy and the mint ; but the services are passing rapidly into
the hands of the Japanese themselves.

The Japanese Government now employs only about a third
as many Europeans altogether as were employed four years
ago. The day is near at hand when a few French lawyers,
acting as interpreters of the Code Civil, will be the only foreign
servants in the pay of the Japanese. But it must not be
supposed from these facts that the English influence will
decrease when Englishmen have ceased to serve the Govern-
ment of Japan. The external trade of Japan is, and seems likely
to continue to be, in English hands. Yokohama and Hiogo are
English towns. The Chinese are gaining ground in the treaty
ports, but the Chinese influence in these days is the influence of
England in another shape. In spite of the use of the Chinese
character by the cultivated Japanese, the language of trade, as
between the Chinese and Japanese in the treaty ports, is the
Er.glish tongue. Many of the Chinese merchants are English

CHAP, xxiv.] ENGLISH INFLUENCE IN JAPAN. 579

subjects, coming as they do from Hong Kong. Moreover, and
above all, the political influences of England and of America com-
bine to lead the Japanese to the use of English as the official
language. This policy is backed by all considerations of conveni-
ence in the case of an island power situated in the Pacific, the
language of which is English, and trading but little with any
country except America, England, the English Colonies and
the thoroughly English treaty ports of China. The defeat of
France by Germany, in the war of 1870, has operated in the same
direction. The military, legal and financial prestige of French
administration had caused the Japanese statesmen to copy the
general governmental organization of France. Since the war
Americans have stepped into many of the posts which French-
men used to fill, and the training of a few Japanese military
students at Berlin has not affected the general result.

The rise of LEuropean influence in Japan has been
accompanied by a patriotic revulsion against that which was
formerly the chief foreign influence — namely, the Chinese.
We may compare the patriotic rage against Germany, and the
destruction of German influence which has accompanied the
opening of Russia to western thought. Chinese influence
was once as dominant in Japan as was German influence
at St Petersburg; but there is no reason to fear that the
foreign influence of the present day will die out in Japan as
the Chinese influence has died out. The Chinese civilisation
was adopted by the Japanese because it was altogether superior-
to their own, and it was abandoned when found to be inferior
to that of the western nations. Much has been written with
regard to the rapidity with which the change has occurred, and
it is indeed impossible not to forget that only fifteen years*
ago no European could set foot in Japan except a Dutch-
man, and he only in one town. About ten years ago Japanese
soldiers wore hideous iron masks, and carried bows, and
foreign ministers could not traverse the streets of the capital
itself without a strong guard. Now, although in the interior of
the country you see no direct evidence of the foreign influence,
you can, if provided with a passport, travel alone with perfect
safety, and indeed receiving more courtesy from the people
* Written in 1875.

2 P 2

5So GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. XXIT.

than is the case in any other country with which I am
acquainted. In the towns, of course, direct foreign influence
is noticeable at every turn. The officials are dressed in
European dress, the police are European in appearance, the
French light infantry bugle marches are heard in the neigh-
bourhood of all the barracks. From the French having
drilled the army and the English the marines, the latter have
all the British stolidity of their teachers, while the sentries of
the guards at the gate of the Mikado's gardens strut up and
down cuddling their rifles, or stand with their feet astraddle, in
exactly the way in which, under the Empire, the Zouaves used to
stand at the Tuileries gates. The bugles of the guards make
day as horrible in the neighbourhood of the castle, as do the
drums and fifes of the marines in the neighbourhood of the port.
English influence, of course, draws certain evils in its train.
Birmingham metal work, cut-glass decanters, gingham um-
brellas, and hideous boots and felt hats are spreading in the
towns, and it has been my unfortunate fate to see an ex-Daimio
dressed in a ready-made coat, driving a gig, and to behold the
detestable suburban villa, near Tokio, in which another lives.
At the same time, Japanese art has not yet been killed by
English " taste." The show-rooms of the former palace of the
Mikado at Kioto, even the tiger room in which the Mikado
used to sleep, are surpassed by the marvellously lovely wall
pictures of the rooms in the priest's house, at the temple on the
Tokaido, near where the Enoshima path turns off at Fujisawa.
These are, I believe, but a few years old, and they certainly
show no falling off from the work of the best period. There is
one room of birds in a snow-storm, one of processions on a gold
ground, one of egrets, and one — this last being the most
beautiful — of flights of kittiwake gulls settling on or rising off
the sea, while hundreds light and run along the sands. Many
of tfee new screens in black, brown and white, with no colour
introduced except in the plumage of birds, much of the work
in mixed metals applied to belts and other articles manufactured
for the European market, the application of enamel to objects
also produced for Europe, and such books as the new Nautical
Almanac (in which even tables of logarithms are made artistic
by the exquisite copper-plate engraving of the Japanese

cn.vr-. xxiv.] EXGLtStf IttFtlEtiCE tfr JAPAtf. 561

characters), on delicate mulberry -leaf paper, compare favour-
ably with the productions of the best days of Japanese art.

Old Japan, as far as costume and social observances are
concerned, may be compared with revolutionary Japan at the
theatres, where are played interminable historic dramas, wholly
based on the old state of things. Nothing has been changed
in the Japanese theatre except, here and there, the hours ;
most of the theatres at the capital, and those of the
interior, play from 9 A.M. until dark. The theatres of the
treaty ports now play from 5 P.M. to i A.M., so that at
Tokio one is able to attend the theatre at most hours of the
day and night. There the two-sworded Samurai still walk the
stage, and Tycoon's soldiers still wear their hideous masks,
and Daimios in magnificent trousers, preceded and followed by
their banners and processions of retainers, still force the people
to prostrate themselves in the dust.

In contrast to the conservatism of the theatres, the critical
modern spirit is shown in the tea-houses which stand near
them. There a common caricature sheet upon the walls, which
dates from just before the revolution, represents a Daimio's
procession of insects. The praying mantis, the locust, the
grasshopper and the wasp are brought into requisition, given
two swords a-piece, and made to bear heraldic banners of
cornflower, poppy and convolvulus. They imitate the swag-
gering walk and arms akimbo of the Samurai, and escort a feeble
cricket carried in a cage. This is the Daimio, before whom
a humble cockroach, who figures the people of Japan, rever-
ently hammers his head upon the ground as he beholds him pass.
Those Japanese who best knew their countrymen before the
revolution, will tell you that there has always been a want of
respect, other than enforced respect, among the people. Their
attitude towards the Mikado seems to be the only exception to
their general want of veneration, which is accompanied by a total
absence of religious fanaticism, and, I think must be added, of
religious reverence. The only temple in Japan inside which I
ever saw a crowd, unless there was a wrestling performance
going on within the walls, was that of Asaksa, in the capital.
This temple is the centre of a sort of fair, or, as the whole of
Tokio resembles the fair of St. Cloud more than it does any-

582 GREATER BRITAIN. [CUAP. SSIT.

thing else in Europe, the centre of a fair within a fair, the
wax-work show and big drum portion of the fair. The temple
of Asaksa is entirely sorrounded by peep-shows and shooting-
galleries, and is always crowded, but more I think by sight-
seeing country people out of curiosity, than by the people of the
capital from religious motives. The Loo Choo envoys were
there at the time of my visit — tall, bearded, solemn men, who
seemed much struck by finding the place of honour in the
temple occupied by a gigantic looking-glass. The mirror may
properly find a place in either Buddhist or Shintoo temple.
The doctrine of Pure Shintoo informs us that the Sun Goddess
was enticed out of her dark cave by a looking-glass ; but in
Buddhism the looking-glass symbolises the mirror of the soul,
and the worshippers are supposed to repair to it as to a con-
fessional. The young ladies with painted lips, and light blue
or crimson satin obis, who eye themselves approvingly in the
great mirror at Asaksa, perhaps think that it has other objects
— at all events, there is nothing in the temple that " draws " so
well. In the ghastly representation of the Buddhist hell, which
is moved by clockwork and forms one of the most popular
peep-shows outside the temple, the mirror also figures, and on
it their crimes are shown to the dead as they enter hell. As I
have named this show I may add that, if it was regarded seriously
by the people, it would be evidence of the existence of a
degrading superstition. It represents green devils with red
tongues, and red devils with green tongues, pounding people in.
mortars, boiling them in oil and frying them upon gridirons.
In one corner an assistant devil is engaged in tying the legs and
arms of men together, and another, who stands by with a
plumb-line and crayon, marks a black line down the middle of
their backs for the guidance of a third, who saws them deliber-
ately in half. As is seen, however by the attitude of the
spectators, the representation is regarded by the Japanese as a
mere joke.

The religious indifference of the Japanese leads to singular
results, I saw one day, in the commercial summary of a trade
journal, this paragraph : — " Bronze. — The export of this metal
has greatly increased, as, owing to the religious reforms of the
Japanese Government, old idols and temple bells are being

CHAP, xxiv.] ENGLISH INFLUENCE IN JAPAN. $8j

very largely sold." The " old idols " of course mean Buddhas.
The Government could never have acted as it has done, had
the hearts of the people really been in their Buddhist faith.
At the same time, I have a doubt as to whether the Japanese
ruling classes, although they seek to establish Shintooism as the
religion of the people, are themselves Shintooists any more than
they are Buddhists. I have a strong impression that a fact
remarked by me in the Mikado's pglace at Kiyoto, that the
sole decoration of the grand hall of state consists of portraits of
the Chinese philosophers, means that the Mikados themselves,
spiritual heads of the Shintoo church — I had almost said
divine heads — though they were, held Confucian tenets.

It is not only in religion that the Japanese show much
pliancy. The questions at issue between the Government of
the Tycoon and that of the Mikado during the civil war were
more than personal questions, and ran through religion,
principles of government, and modes of thought, yet the leading
men of the Tycoon's Government have been very generally
employed by the Government which succeeded to the imperial
power.

One short story of the war will illustrate several statements
that I have made.

In 1874 an American officer gave a dinner party in Japan.

His guests were a Mr. C , a Southerner, Enomoto, now

Japanese ambassador at St. Petersburg, and Kurota. Enomoto
had commanded the last force of the Tycoon, eight years ago,
and had afterwards been the chief man in the short-lived
Japanese republic proclaimed at the northern island by the
Tycoon's troops, after their master's fall. So sudden had been
the change in a single year, that Enomoto had had under his
command French officers who had entered the service of the
then all-powerful "Emperor," and who almost immediately had
found that they were serving in a rebel army. Enomoto had
had under his orders the steam yacht Emperor, presented to
the Tycoon by the Queen of England, and thus suddenly
become a rebel ship. Kurota had been the general command-
ing the Mikado's forces at the siege of the last town which
Enomoto held. In the last days of the siege Kurota had sent
delicacies to the table of the rival general, and Enomoto had

584 GRfiAfEtl n&ITATtf* [CHA?.

returned the compliment by sending a great work on military
engineering to the general — as some say that he might be at no
disadvantage in his siege operations, but, as others explain, in
order that the very valuable work, of which there was no other
copy, should not be lost to the common country in the fires
which might attend the storm of the town. The dinner of 1874
took place at Hakodadi, which was the town in question.

Kurota, in the course of conversation, turning to Colonel W.,
said, " Why, only ten yeafs ago you and Mr. C. were fighting
against each other in Texas !"

Colonel W. at once replied, " Why, only six years ago you
and Enomoto were fighting against each other at this very
place!"

"Ah, yes," said Kurota, "but in Japan it's different."

Thorough as, to European ideas, has been the forgive-and-
forget in America, it has been even more complete in Japan.

The courtesy in war, which is noticeable in the story I have
just told, is characteristic of the Japanese. Those who would
know that people should read the official narrative of the
military expedition to Formosa in 1874. It is a romantic
history, which cannot but awake a desire to make acquaintance
with the dashing soldiers who bore so cheerfully the hardships
of that rough campaign, and with the ministers — Soyesima,
Okuma, and Okubo — who gained a diplomatic triumph over no
less acute a master of statecraft than Prince Kung himself. If
I had not known the utter fearle ;sness of the Japanese, I should
have been tempted to believe, from the first part of the
narrative, that they were afraid of entering on the active
operations of the war. It was only their politeness. After
landing twenty thousand men to avenge the cutting off the
heads of some Japanese sailors, they sent embassy after
embassy to the Formosan chiefs to get them to explain the
exact reason why the men's heads had been cut off, and it was
only when the Formosans, growing impatient, cut off the heads
of some of these envoys, that the Japanese proceeded to punish
them by the destruction of their forts and towns.

Not only the proceedings of the Formosan, but those in the
matter of the threatened Corean Expedition, are of interest, as
revealing the real opinions of the Japanese upon foreign affairs.

Ctut. xtiv.] EXGLtSIl INFLumCE IN JAPAN. $8$

The leaders in the native newspapers, at the time when war
Avith Corea seemed likely, give the most pleasing view of the
enlightenment, and of the courage and spirit of the Japanese.
The Hochi Shimbun t which opposed the war, wrote as follows : —

" Were we still in a state of barbarism, all the money of the
nation would be spent for war purposes. But in an advanced
condition of civilisation the strength of the nation must depend
on the progress of knowledge. If our statesmen were now to
urge that increased provision for war should rank as of greater
moment than the improvement of our judicial system, or the
education of our people, they would exhaust the treasury and
after all we should not be able to resist a power like that of
England. What is necessary for our country is power in the
people, which must come from the spread of that knowledge,
which is really power, rather than from the making of provision
against war."

In another article the Hochi Shimbun said, —

" Some writers argue that the sending of an army against
Core i is to gain renown for Japan abroad, and that even the
enlightened countries of Europe extend their prestige by force
of arms. But is it not a shallow notion of these critics to
imagine that Japan will gain renown abroad from an expedition
against Corea? If we insist on raising our prestige by arms,
let us first of all chastise the encroachments of Russia. The
truth, however, is that the prestige of Japan is not at present to
oe raised by arms. We are still unable to freely exercise our
jurisdiction. On this account our Japanese brethren are
constantly exposed to wrongs to which they ought not to be
exposed, and foreigners escape punishment which they ought
not to escape. We believe that the day which gives back to
Japan her rights in these respects will be the day that will raise
our national prestige."

On the other hand the Akcbono Shimbun wrote in the
following terms : —

" Our army and navy are small, and the treasury is not full.
But an independent country must, when forced to do so, protect
its rights, and, if the worst comes to the worst, be prepared to
fight even such countries as England and France."

As I have said much in praise of the Japanese Government,

586 GREATER BRITAIN. [CUAP. xxiv.

I must, on the other hand, state that I am reminded by this
mention of the native newspapers, that the new men who rule
the country show a great impatience of the criticism of the
Press. They have established an unwise and severe press-
gagging law, and they have induced Sir Harry Parkes to issue
an order of doubtful legality, making the publication of Japanese
newspapers by British subjects in treaty ports an offence
punishable by imprisonment. This order confiscated a property
already established, encouraged the Japanese in a foolish
course, and made that a crime for Englishmen at Yokohama
which is no crime for Englishmen at Shanghai and Canton.
The authorities at Tokio would certainly like to reach Mr.
Wirgman, the gifted correspondent of the Illustrated London
News, who in his Yokohama Punch, published, fortunately for
him, in English, represented, during my stay at Tokio, the
Japanese home minister toasting editors upon a gridiron in
presence of grim legions of spectacled Japanese police.

I cannot trust myself to write at length of what I saw in the
interior, for I should, in the enthusiasm which siezes all who
travel in Japan, be tempted to re-describe manners and scenes
which have been described already. My most interesting trip
was the last I made — one with a charming companion, a bank
manager from Hiogo, to the feudal castle of Akashi. This was
a trip not only full of pleasure, but full of interest, from its
bearing on the changes which so suddenly have fallen on the
country of the Rising Sun. Leaving Hiogo Kobe by the
Tokaido, or great high road of the Eastern Sea, of which I had
already seen long stretches, between Osaka and Kiyoto,
between Kiyoto and Lake Biwa, and nearer to the capital, the
first spot of interest to which we came was an ancient battle-
field, in scenery resembling that of Cannes. A grove of giant
pine-trees stands on the sea shore, at the entrance to the in-
land sea by the lovely Akashi Straits. Here the northern and
southern barons met in battle seven hundred years ago, and to
this day the population of the neighbouring villages, wholly unrc«
lated to the men who fell, pile little heaps of stones upon each
grave. Passing the new fortifications of the Straits, and a fine
ancient Buddha seated gravely in their rear, we soon came to
our feudal town. The Tokaido separated the town proper from

. xxiv.] ENGLISH INFLUENCE IN JAPAN. 587

the houses of the Samurai, retainers of the family of Akashi.
The houses looking towards the Samurai dwellings, and conse-
quently towards the castle, had their windows screened with
boards to prevent the prying of any Peeping Tom. The good
old Tories who inhabit them have not been tempted even by
the revolution to take down these inconvenient and ugly
screens. The Samurai town is not unlike a strong Maori pah.
From the outside, the houses cannot be seen. Each opening
in a long mud wall is covered by another wall, from which
defenders could fire upon an advancing foe. At the back of
each house is a large garden in which rice could be grown
during a blockade. Here once lived the swaggering swash-
bucklers who, with arms akimbo and with two swords apiece
stuck horizontally across their chests, used to march to Yeddo
yearly with their lord when he went to the Tycoon's capital for
his " enforced residence," and fight the retainers of the other
princes in the streets. Wide roads start from the Tokaido
here and there as though to lead to Akashi Castle, but they
lead but to a maze inside a hornet's nest ; and conduct the
stormers only to a loop-holed wall or to a moat. The real
entrances to the castle are at the side and rear, and there four
lines of fortifications lurk among the trees, with gates that are
very Gibraltars of stone, while the keep surmounts a lofty rock.
Behind the castle is a lovely park run wild, in which are
glissanies with stems as large as one's thigh, growing from tree
to tree, and lacing round the giant camellias and the tall
bamboos. Tree-ducks fly from every old pine stem about the
hawking-pond, across which flit kingfishers innumerable, their
bright plumage showing even in the dense green shade. Near
the fortress is a shrine containing a little Buddha ; shrine and
priest's house both deserted for five years, and the very mats,
fine and valuable though they are, left upon the floors unstolen,
as are the pictures on the walls. No Japanese are ever seen
within the grounds : either they think them haunted, or their
respect for the fillen Daitnio is too great, for Japanese are not
like other dwellers in picturesque places, unaware of the
beauties that surround them. They love the picturesque ; they
are the only people who plant in their fields double fruit trees
for the beauty of their bloom ; and it is only their new govern-

538 QB&ATE& BRtfAlS. [OHAI-. ixtt.

ment that has the vandalism to cut great trees. A fortified
solitude is the best name for Akashi as it stands. Is the
revolution popular in such a feudal town as this ? It was the
Mikado's birthday when I was there, and the national flag of
the just-risen sun was hoisted upon every house. That this,
however, was the result of a police decree, and not spontaneous,
was clear from the fact that in the smaller villages of the
neighbourhood, where there are no police, not a flag was up.
The feudal princes spent, of course, much money in their chief
towns. The ex-Daimio of Akashi, before whom eight years
ago the people used to crawl, and who had power of life and
death, is now living at Tokio in European style, while his
retainers have been drafted into the foot-guards.

In every journey in the interior it is of interest to note how
far foreign influence is seen. Indirectly it is there, because the
revolution was European, and the revolution is there. You no
longer meet two-sworded warriors ; you no longer see the
people bowing to the earth before their princes ; — that is all.
Even the hats and boots and umbrellas of the treaty-ports have
not yet appeared, and clogs or sandals, picturesque top-knots,
and cotton head-rags, and pretty paper sunshades are still
the order of the day. You sometimes see the telegraph ; and
in villages big enough to possess a book-shop you will find
Japanese books on foreign countries in great abundance, with
cuts of the Capitol at Washington, Wentworth-Wodehouse, the
Tower of London, Chatsworth, George Washington, Louis
Napoleon, Madame Patti, and President Grant. The traveller
finds evidence of a desire to learn English existing on all
sides, and the Japanese already know more English than do
our Indian subjects. Still, this wish to learn a foreign tongue is
nothing new in Japan. Chinese has been worked at for ages in
an aimless way. Chinese characters are used out of pedantry
in books, although the easier Japanese characters have to be
printed at the side. At a peep-show in the capital I found all
the explanations, out of politeness, in the Chinese character
alone, which few of the visitors understood. The intellectual
and social debt of Japan to China is a subject of some interest
in itself. Japan bears to China in civilisation the relation that
Sweden bears to Germany. In the Middle Ages, Japan

CHAP. XMV.] ENGLISH INFLUENCE IN JAPAN. 589

borrowed from China, as Sweden borrowed from Germany,
many of the externals of her civilisation, but she kept, as
Sweden kept, a national life alive beneath. To return to the
language question, at all the temples receiving State aid are
English and French inscriptions warning visitors not to fish in
the ponds, and not to shoot birds in the trees, even where the
temples are situated in parts of the interior seldom visited by
foreigners, and never by any who cannot understand Japanese.
The English of Japan is not at present very good. There are
two guide-books to the ancient capital, Kiyoto, written in
English by Japanese. The one calls Buddhas " idles," and the
other calls them " idoles." Among the statements in these
books are the following : — " It had been burnt to the ground
by thunderlight twenty-nine years ago." " Biyodoin : — it was
in this temple that a most brave general nameJ Yorimasa
sucided there 694 years ago." " Mumenomiya was built for
honour of a virtious person — at ancient, one thousand and
twenty-six years ago." " Narabigaoka is named so because the
hills stand very peticulairly after one another."

Whatever may be our doubts as to the extent of the foreign
influence, we can have none as to the loveliness of Japan, and
the delight of travelling in the interior. When I left the
country I had seen seven out of the eight largest towns ; but it
is not the weeks in the cities that live in my recollection, but
the few days spent in the country districts. Japan is the
traveller's paradise. Through a strange medley of pines and
palms, of rice and buckwheat, of bamboos and elms, of tea and
cotton ; through azalea thickets and camellia groves, across
tobacco fields and past rocks covered with evergreen ferns of a
hundred kinds, and crowned with grotesque remains ; through
tussac grass and forests of scarlet maple, and over mountains
clad in rich greenery, you may journey in perfect peace, safe
from robbery, safe from violence, safe even from beggars, never
troubled, never asked for anything, except by a civil police-
man for your pass-port, and that with the lowest of low bows.
The maidens say " Ohio," sweetly to you in the villages as you
pass, where eight years ago you might have been sliced up by
the sharp swords of the Samurai. " Ohio," too, call the
labourers in the fields, leaving their work to come and bo\v at

59° GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xxiv.

the roadside ; not as the Javanese bow to the Dutch, but with
the bow of equal to equal, the bow of infinite politeness. With-
out servant or interpreter, a European can travel in safety
throughout the land.

The people and their houses have been described too often.
One cannot but love their fun, their cleanliness, their inborn
sense of art. It is impossible to realise that the Japanese are
real men and women. What with the smallness of the people,
their incessant laughing chatter, and their funny gesture?, one
feels one's self in elf-land. On a fine day, the men appear as
grinning demons in black tights, streaked all over with blue
heraldry. On wet days, the long rush coats and long-sided
straw hats equally remove all vestige of humanity. When we
turn over Japanese pictures in our English homes we fancy that
both the faces and the dress must be unlike real life. On the
contrary, they are very like the old fashions of the wealthy class,
with whom faces are as much made up, and are as much a
matter of fashion ar> are clothes. It is the country-people of
Japan who are my elves — the tiny, jovial, copper-coloured
poor. Were I describing rural Japan at length, I would try to
show that it may be looked at from a point of view from which
it has not as yet been much considered. Japan is the last
refuge of the Joyous Life. See the Thames on a fine Saturday
in July, or the fair of St. Cloud on the last Sunday evening of
its reign, and you may Tor a moment believe that even in
Europe the Joyous Life is not extinct; but the fun of the
Thames is vulgar, and the loose morals of St. Cloud are venal.
The Joyous Life of the Middle Ages may have been bad or
good — in Europe it is gone, and let us speak well of the dead
— but it was neither venal nor vulgar ; that life lives still in
Japan, where no paganism of antique grandeur dwells, but
rollicking, unthinking fun. All who love children must love
the Japanese, the most gracious, the most courteous, and the
most smiling of all peoples, whose rural districts form, with
Through-the-Looking-Glass-Country and Wonderland, the three
kingdoms of merry dreams.

59*

CHAPTER XXV.
ENGLISH INFLUENCE IN CHI::A.

I WAS not free from prejudice when I visited * the coast of
China last autumn : prejudice in favour of the Chinese. I had
long ago formed a strong opinion against much of the action of
foreigners in China, and against their views, if those views are
represented by the China press. That my prejudices were
honest, I am sure ; that they were well grounded I still believe.
They had first been formed by such paragraphs as this, from
the China Mail: " Let us say to China, ' This must be done,
because we choose.' " And this from the North China
Herald : " The gunboat will once more at least appear on the
stage in China, for its mission is not yet ended, and premature
attempts to dispense with it will only make its employment the
more necessary and prolonged." My prejudices had been
strengthened by the mendacious telegrams from China, which,
during some years, weekly murdered missionaries, or insulted
ambassadors, in the innocent columns of the English papers.
In spite of the Yunan difficulty, and Sir T. F. Wade's with-
drawal from Pekin, our general relations with China may be
said to have improved. The late Lord Clarendon, to his
honour, set the approval of the English Foreign Office on the
"co-operative policy," first adopted at Pekin by my friends
Sir Frederick Bruce, General Vlangaly, and Mr. Anson Burl-
ingame, of whom the Russian minister alone has lived to see
the good results of the system then inaugurated. That wise
policy consists in the strengthening of the Central Government
at Pekin. That Government is the government of a Tartar
dynasty, unpopular with the Chinese people, it is true ; but
pur plan is not to support it against insurrection, but only
* Written in 1875.

593 GHEATEE BRITAIN. [CHAP. xxv.

against its delegated Provincial Governments, also Tartar, and
also unpopular with the people. It is understood that we are
not to prop up the Pekin Government against any future wide-
spread insurrection, and we are not to defend it in the possible
event of a Mohammedan invasion. All that we are to do is to
keep China together, no matter who is the Emperor who may
sit on the throne at Pekin. We are to deal with and through
the Chinese Foreign Office, instead of with the local authori-
ties in the various provinces. Force is to be used only to
protect life and property immediately exposed, in opposition
to the views of the fire-eating merchants at the ports, who
think that China should be forced to do what they desire, and
that force should be used at the caprice of any gunboat captain.
The success of the " co-operative policy " was jeopardised
by the attack on the French missionaries at Tientsin, an attack
which was due to the folly of those persons in employing
professional kidnappers to collect children for them, but which
was punished with most un-Oriental promptitude by the Pekin
Government. On this occasion, however, the North China
Herald showed the old bad spirit, and positively advised that
" the heads of districts should be publicly flogged . . . that
the prefect and city magistrates of Tientsin should be degraded
and executed, . . . that Tientsin should be debarred for
twenty years from sending candidates to the provincial examina-
tions, . . . and that a permanent occupation of the Ta-ku
Forts should be insisted on." All these for an attack, by the
'longshore men of the roughest city in the Chinese Empire
upon the most injudicious body of good men who ever
inhabited a foreign country ! As I have spoken thus plainly
with regard to the injudicious conduct of certain missionaries,
I feel bound to add that nothing could have been better than
the conduct of the English missionary bodies. Their policy is
expressed in a letter of the London Missionary Society, written
a few years ago. The English Foreign Office had informed
the missionaries of the exact nature of their treaty rights.
They then replied : " The range of movement here indicated
agrees with that which the missionaries understood that they
possessed, and in the judgment of the directors it provides an
ample sphere of usefulness for all the missionaries whom it is

. xxf.J ENGLISH INFLUENCE IN CHINA. 5$}

practicable to send forth to China. It is under these powers
that the seven principal stations of our mission have been
established. It is under them that visits have been paid to the
churches and converts around these stations, and that long
preaching tours, extending at times to hundreds of miles, have
been undertaken. The directors were urged to seek additional
powers when the treaties shall be revised, but when it is
beyond their strength to exhaust existing privileges, they
think it useless to ask that they should be enlarged. . . . The
directors feel assured that there is not one of the missionaries
of this society who, in the course of his duties, would desire
any appeal whatever to physical force." Dr. Mullens, in his
" Report on the China Missions," took the same view, and
showed that fifteen cities of the very first importance were, by
treaty and in fact, open to the missionaries, and that only
seven of the fifteen had as yet been occupied. Let me state
that these treaty cities contain a population of three and a half
millions. In Pekin there are some 50 Protestant converts to
800,000 people, and in Hankow but the same number in a
population of 1,000,000. Our Foreign Office summed up the
whole question when it wrote, that " it is impossible to protect
missionary establishments where no British Consul is stationed."
When a few American missionaries, and when the French
Catholic missionaries, wander away into the interior, and
occasionally meet with a little stone-throwing from a mob, we
should remember the Murphy riots in England, the " anti-
Chinese" riots of Australia, and hold our peace. Has China
ever obtained compensation for the ill-usage of her peaceable
and unoffending subjects in California, and in our colonies ?

The Chinese have also been much attacked in the China
press for what are called violations by them of the treaties in
the matter of transit dues. It is certain that a clearer under-
standing with the Chinese upon the subject of local taxes on
British goods would be desirable ; but such an arrangement has
never been refused by the Chinese, and was contained in the
Supplementary Articles of Sir Rutherford Alcock, to which they
agreed, though our merchants refused to accept as sufficient
concessions made by China without any consideration given to
China in return. When I saw Sir Thomas Wade in November

2 Q

594 G&EATER tiEITAttf. [CHAP. xxt.

last,* 1 found that, in spite of all the pressure of the merchants, he
still believes that this question will ultimately be settled on the
basis that Sir Rutherford Alcock proposed. I gathered from him,
however, that he thought that the Chinese have broken the letter
of the Transit Clause of the Treaty of Tientsin. They contend
that they have not ; but it must at all events be remembered
that this was a treaty extorted from them, and in which Lord
Elgin, having the empire at his mercy, obtained privileges far in
excess of those for which he was told to ask. It was foreseea
at the time that difficulties would arise out of a grasping policy
upon this point. We were warned that the Chinese, whose
whole customs' system is one of tolls levied at many places,
could not with justice be asked suddenly to revolutionise it in
our favour. We should have wondered if foreigners had been
freed from paying toll for their carnages upon English roads
while it continued to be paid by British subjects. We allow
our whole trade with Central Asia to be stopped by the
tolls that our Cashmere feudatories levy, and are shocked
and horrified beyond measure if the Chinese presume
to raise from our people their ordinary dues. Lord Elgin
himself, in his dispatch about his treaty, wrote : " As duties
of octroi are levied universally in China, on native as well as
foreign goods, and as canals and roads are kept up at the
expense of Government, it seemed to be unreasonable to
require that goods, by the simple process of passing into the
hands of foreigners, should be entitled to the use of canals and
roads toll-free, and should moreover be relieved altogether
from charges to which they would be liable if the property of
natives." Sir Rutherford Alcock, when British Minister at
Pekin, writing to the Inspector-General of Customs, said upon
this question; "Lord Elgin made an admirable treaty upon
paper. One thing only was wanting — that it should be
practicable. Some of the stipulations, such as those on transit
dues, ran counter to all established order, law, and custom, and
,wert unworkable for that simple reason. The transit dues'
stipulation gives to foreigners throughout the length and
breadth of this vast empire, with its decentralised provinces
and outlying dependencies, all larger than European kingdoms,

* 1874-

. xxv.j ENGLISH ItiFLVEtiCfi IN ClllNA. 595

the right of a favoured-nation clause as against all natives and
native commerce. It purported to withdraw from all fiscal
operations a portion of the inland commerce, which it was
impossible to separate in any clear or definite way. It presup-
posed an organization and a mode of national administration
which had no existence, and the reconstruction under totally
new forms, upon some European model, of the whole adminis-
tration and government of China. Such ends are beyond the
reach of treaties, and any attempt to secure them by such
means must always lead to failure, for which it is absurd to
hold the successors of the negotiators responsible, any more
than the government or sovereign on whom impossible condi-
tions have been imposed by superior force." It must be
remembered, too, that China has conceded many privileges to
foreign merchants, not included in the treaty, such as the coast
trade, and participation by foreign coasters in the " four months'
privilege."

With regard to another vexed question, that of inland resi-
dence, there is now less dispute. It used to be contended by
some missionaries, and by all those merchants in thel Treaty
Ports, who see their interest in the forcible " opening " of the
Chinese Empire, that besides the right of travel with passports,
our subjects possess a general right of residence in the interior.
This was claimed under the general articles of the French
Treaty, or by the terms of the Russian Treaty, through the
most-favoured-nation clause in our own. In some letters to
the Times, I pointed out that which was not in those days
admitted, namely, that the Russian stipulations referred only
to certain special places in Mongolia, and that the general
words in the French Treaty are a forgery. It is now allowed
by our Foreign Office that this is so, and also that the words
<!or other places" in the English Treaty, are "not general
words," but intended only to include the cities at the Treaty
Ports. Our Foreign Office now declares that the specification
of a right to reside at the Treaty Ports implies the exclusion of
the privilege of permanent residence in other parts of the
Chinese Empire. The Chinese, when fairly approached, and
when asked with civility to grant a favour, instead of being
threatened if they do not concede an imaginary right, permit

2 <> 2

$96

a wide extension of the privileges which the treaties give".
Shanghai merchants, on their shooting expeditions, travel like
princes in the interior, with a numerous suite, their extra-
territoriality, or exemption from the law, being at the same
time preserved. In the valley of Cashmere, ruled by a prince
feudatory to ourselves, whose father we first set upon the
throne, no such liberality exists. There our sportsmen, and
our officers travelling for their health, are not only compelled
to make use of passports, but are tied down by local rules as
to the rate at which they shall move, and the number of
servants in their retinue. The Chinese, in spite of the treaties,
have always allowed of inland residence where it was practicable
to do so ; witness their quiet toleration of the presence of a
missionary two hundred miles up the Pearl River, and of
diggers and missionaries at Chefoo. On the pass-port matter
the Chinese have observed the treaty, although Lord Elgin
went beyond his instructions in insisting on it, and obtained
the concession only by a threat of the renewal of the war. Sir
Rutherford Alcock, in one of his dispatches on the revision of
the treaty, wrote : " As regards inland residence, the objections
appear to be insuperable in connection with extra-territorial
rights. The Chinese Government are willing that Chinese
and foreigners should be placed on an equal footing ; but not
that the latter should also have exceptional privileges. They
contend that if the foreign merchant claims the one, he must
in common justice forego the other."

The Chinese suffer in English estimation by comparison
with the Japanese. The progress of English influence in
Japan has been so rapid and so startling, that many ask why
China should not be "opened" with equal speed. Had it not
been for the case of Japan, we should have thought the progress
of European influence in China, in the last ten years, to have
been remarkable. It is the extraordinary adaptability of the
Japanese to foreign civilisation that makes the movement in
China seem by comparison to be slow. The Japanese are a
people who, once before in their history, had accepted a
foreign influence — the Chinese — which utterly changed their
civilisation. What they had done once before, they have done
again. European civilisation has not been forced upon Japan,

CHAP, xxv.] ENGJJSU INFLUENCE JN CHINA 59?

but has been voluntarily adopted by the people. This is no
argument for forcing it upon China ; on the contrary, there is
reason to hope that if the Chinese are but left alone they wi'l
adopt it very fast for themselves. The use of gunboats and of
expeditionary armies makes it impossible for the Chinese to
accept that foreign influence, which can make its way only
when it is an influence of peace. The Chinese Empire is of
enormous size ; the Japanese is small, and surrounded by the
sea. There are but 33,000,000 of Japanese; there are ten
times as many Chinese. On the other hand, the consequences
to the world, and especially to the whole of the coast and
islands of the Pacific, of the adoption of European civilisation
by China, will be vastly more important than those of its
adoption by the Japanese. Not only are the Chinese a
migrating people, rapidly making their way in the Straits
Settlements, in the whole of the Malay Archipelago, in South
America, and in the United States, but they are a people with
more steadiness of character, and with more power of pro-
longed labour than the Japanese. They are less popular wi.h
those who live among them. The Japanese are courteous,
polished, and full of pleasing tolerance. The Chinese are
irritating to the English who have to deal with them, although
those who have lived the longest in intimate association with
the Chinese people, come to respect them for their perseverance.
The future of English influence in China is not, however, to
be determined by personal likes or dislikes for the Chinese
nation. We have to consider both policy and justice.

What right have we to force China suddenly to accept the
demands of our merchants as to railroads, mining, and internal
navigation by means of steamships? As for railroads, the
merchants forget that it is but a generation and a half ago that
they were bitterly opposed in England. It is true that the
Chinese authorities give reasons against both railroads and
mining which are not their real ones. They pretend that it is
the disturbance of the graves of their ancestors that they dread.
What they really fear is the introduction of great numbers of
foreigners into the interior of their country. They will be
willing that railroads should be made so soon as they can be
by \h$ natives of the country for themselves, The

598 GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xxv.

opposition to internal steam navigation rests upon a different
ground. The Chinese believe that a vast number of people,
the boatmen and their families, would be mined by the change.
In its more settled districts, and especially along the river
banks, China is peopled up to a point at which living becomes
precarious to a degree never reached in any other country.
The economical consequences of any disturbance of the present
equilibrium of poverty have never been investigated. It has
never been denied by any economist that the introduction of
machinery may cause severe temporary injury to the labouring
class; but the policy of such introduction is defended on the
ground of the increase of general prosperity. But in China the
question is one of starvation and revolution or anarchy, in
many provinces at the least. While machinery has been
gradually introduced into European countries, in the case of
China we are suddenly threatening a vast over-populated empire
with all the splendid mechanical contrivances of Europe planted
there at once. One of our Consuls has written with regard to
the disturbance even of the coasting trade, — for which the
Chinese themselves are responsible, but which is trifling as
compared with that which would be caused by the admission
of steamers to the inland or river trade : — " Thousands of
Chinamen were thrown out of employment by the introduction
of foreign vessels. One may reckon that for every hundred
tons of foreign shipping employed on the China coast, thirty
Chinese were deprived of their means of living. The introduc-
tion of railways into China would create far greater distress,
and I conscientiously believe that the Chinese Government is
not yet capable of coping with the difficulties which too sudden
an introduction of railroads would occasion."

* * * * *

The Yunan difficulty would require a long paper to itself.
Suffice it to say that many who well know the facts believe, as
I believe, that we have a bad case. It will always remain
chronicled to our shame in our own Parliamentary papers,
that we mixed up demands for trade privileges with demands
for satisfaction to our national honour, and that we allowed,
and were indeed the cause of, the infliction of horrible
tortures on the people of the place where Mr, Margary's death

CHAP, xxv.] ENGLISH INFLUENCE IN CHINA. 599

occurred. Judging from my conversation of last November
with Sir Thomas Wade, and from all that has been published
since, I cannot but fear that he has taken upon insufficient
grounds the very serious step of removing the archives of
the British Legation from Pekin. Our Foreign Office seems
wisely to have forbidden him to do that which he proposed,
namely, to continue to ask for money compensation, and for
trade privileges, in connection with this Yunan affair. He
seems to have been perplexed to know what he should ask
for next, and in this perplexity to have cut the knot, which he
himself had tied, by threatening force. I doubt whether " people
at home " will approve the language of the North China Herald
of the ist of July, which, in announcing that Sir Thomas
Wade has quarrelled with the Chinese Foreign Office, and
has come to Shanghai, declares that " war will be welcome."

Even at this moment, when by our own acts we check the
tendency of the Chinese towards progress, they are planning
schemes which will do more towards the opening-up of China
than could be done by war. In 1875 the Pekin Government
employed a gentleman from Newcastle to survey the coal
measures of the Island of Formosa. Mines have since been
opened there,* and are being worked by the Chinese themselves
with great success, and the same gentleman is about surveying
the coal measures in the neighbourhood of Pekin. If peace
should last there can be but little doubt that the coal mines of
China will be worked within the next few years.

It must always be remembered, when we are describing our
trade relations with the Chinese, that we cannot act alone.
Other powers must be considered. America, which has about
1 6 per cent, of the trade of the China coast, is reasonable, and
will work with us, but Germany with 3 per cent, France with
i per cent., and Russia with little or none, are unwilling to
agree to changes which suit us. For instance, the French will
not consent to a very moderate increase of the silk duty,
although England is ready to agree to a heavy increase of the
opium duty, which would tell against herself. These changes
would form the consideration to the Chinese in return for a
favourable adjustment of internal transit dues, and other matters.
* Now, alas, laid waste by France,

6co GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xxv.

On the other hand, the merchants want us to negotiate with
China at the point of the bayonet, and to say : " These things
we will have, and will give you nothing in return." This, of
course, is unacceptable to those who live " at home," and the
result is a dead-lock. Of course the Chinese do not love us ;
it would be wonderful if they did. They have allowed
Englishmen to organise their only perfect service, the Customs,
but when Mr. Hart retires it is probable that a Chinese
Mandarin will take his place. They are training a hundred
students in America, and in a few years will be able to work
their Customs service without foreign aid. On the whole,
however, the status quo is preferable to war, and I left the China
coast as I had reached it, with the conviction that the
co-operative policy is the only policy which can maintain our
China trade. Under the old system a Consul at a small port
could provoke, in a single day, a difficulty which might destroy
for years a trade of millions. It is impossible to leave it in the
power of individuals to destroy the fabric of commercial
prosperity, which has been built up upon the basis of our
China treaties.

It must not be supposed that I am a thick and thin apologist
of the Chinese. There are some points in which I would
gladly see our influence over them used in a hostile sense.
The atrocious tortures by which they wring confession from
their criminals constitute a horror which western nations might
properly put down by force ; but force is a very different thing
when used in the interests of pure humanity to what it is when
made use of in the interests of trade.

The detestable climate of Southern China is a drawback to
the strength of English influence. Any one who sees the clean
and beautiful island-city of Hong Kong in its lovely winter
season, will think that its residents have nothing to complain
of; but the breathless summer of many months of a still and
damp heat, ten times worse than that of Australia, is as
exhausting as is the summer climate of Calcutta itself. Hong
Kong, however, is a colony of which we have every reason to
be proud. While the Portuguese settlement at Macao, which
Ues close at hand, enjoyed a short-lived prosperity, founded on
{he infamous Co9lie traffics the prosperity of Hong Kong isf

CHAP, xxv.] t.NGLISn INFLUENCE IN CHINA. 601

founded upon free-trade. In the matter of the Chinese Coolie
traffic we have cause for congratulation. In this, at all events,
we have helped the Chinese Government with representations,
and with action, which they never could have made or taken
for themselves. It was time indeed that England should speak
out, although it is to her honour that she should have spoken.
The Chinese Coolie traffic was worse than the African slave-
trade, to put down which we made such sacrifice. The truth
is, that the Chinese Coolies, taking to Cuba no women with
them, are less respected and more cruelly tortured and worked-
otit by their masters than were even the negro slaves of the
Spanish colonies, because they are not looked upon as breeding
animals ! Happily Macao is ruined, while Hong Kong thrives.
If we were to believe some of the Hong Kong merchants we
should have to echo their complaint that Hong Kong is ruined
too. I received the greatest kindness and hospitality from
many of these gentlemen, but I feel bound to speak out with
regard to their political ideas. I would far sooner go with them
for the annexation of the Chinese Empire than say one word in
approval of their custom of perpetually attacking the Chinese
Government on questions in which it is strictly in the right.
The Hong Kong merchants assured me with grave faces that
the colony had been " ruined by a Chinese blockade." Trade
is dull throughout the East, but the Hong Kong merchants
protest that there is no cause for its dulness at Hong Kong,
except this Chinese blockade. Chinese gunboats cruise around
the island of Hong Kong and board the junks. Now it is
notorious that there used to be more smuggling from Hong
Kong into China than even into Spain from the similarly-
situated Gibraltar. There is still much smuggling of opium,
and by our treaty we seem to have taken away the natural
right of the Chinese to fine the smugglers, and as they can only
seize the goods, they are bound to be doubly strict. What then
is the complaint? The merchants say that the gunboats "levy
squeezes on the junks." All these gunboats have European
custom officials on board, masters of the Chinese language,
whose livelihood depends on no such case being proved against
{he gunboat on board which they are, for in that case Mr. Hart*
* No\v, Sir Kobcrj.

6oa GREATER BRITAIN. [CHAP. xxv.

would be forced to dismiss them from his service. Is it likely
that these persons levy illegal exactions from the junks ? Who
prove these cases of exaction ? Chinese Coolies, on their bare
word ; when, on his most solemn oath, these same merchants
will not believe any great Chinese official. Sir Brooke
Robertson, our Consul at Canton, refused a little time ago to
back a more than usually violent and absurd remonstrance of
our merchants ; he was in consequence called a " Mandarin,"
and told that he " prevaricated." The day after a number of
Hong Kong merchants had told me that their trade was ruined
by the Chinese blockade, I examined for myself the statistics,
and I also inquired of the highest authority in the colony what
truth there was in the statement. I found that in spite of the
general dulness of our Eastern trade the trade of Hong Kong had
not at that time decreased. The fact, however, that our Eastern
trade is stagnant is a small one by the side of another, for a fact
1 fear it is. Our export trade to China will disappear, and its
disappearance is but a matter of time. The day will come
when the Chinese, with cheap labour, will make for themselves
all, with the exception perhaps of woollen goods, that we can
make for them with dear. They have cotton, coal, water-power,
and clever fingers : and we shall be lucky if they only supply
themselves, and do not also rob us of foreign trade.

My mention just now of the Chinese gunboats reminds me ot
one point in which we have distinctly carried out what Lord
Beaconsfield last year declared to be our policy — the preserva-
tion of China. When the first Chinese gunboats were built
at Canton the Viceroy hoisted upon them his own flag. Our
Admiral at Hong Kong refused to salute or to advise the
captains of merchantmen to honour any flag, except the
"Dragon Flag" of the Chinese Empire. The various viceroys
have been driven by this policy to hoist the yellow flag with
the black dragon on the local warships, and the moral effect in
strengthening the hold of Pekin on the provinces, of this and
similar acts has been considerable.

The value of Hong Kong as a door for the admission of
English influence into China has been diminished by one act of
Mr. Gladstone's First Administration. All Englishmen in the
East regret what they believe to have been the folly of aba*

CHAP, xxv.] EXGLISH INFLUENCE IN CHINA. 603

lishing our mint at Hong Kong, which was giving an English
coinage to all China. China has no real coinage for purposes
of trade. Little bits of silver assayed and weighed, and dollars
of the Mexican Republic, battered out of shape, and classed
one, two, and three, at different values, according as an affected
comprador pretends to have found more or less bronze in their
composition — this is the ridiculous " coinage " of the coast. In
Hong Kong itself, when I took my letters to the post and gave
a dollar to the clerk to pay for stamps, I had to wait while he
bit it, tried it with an acid, weighed it, and gave me change,
not as though my dollar were a dollar, but according to its
weight, which was fWhs of what it should have been. This
was no exceptional case, but was the practice gone through in
every instance. Such is the repute of English coin, that the
Hong Kong mint would in a few years have introduced the use
of its dollars by the Chinese people throughout the trading
portions of the Empire, without continuing to impose any
charge whatever on the English tax-payer.

The history of dollars would be a very curious one. The
Chinese look doubtfully upon all that do not bear the name of
some well-known Chinese firm stamped upon them, as we write
names across the back of a bank-note, except they are of one
kind ; Mexican pillar dollars, the two pillars of which are de-
scribed in their Chinese name, " Two-piecy-canneltick " dollars,
that is, two candlestick dollars. A note in the history of dollars
that I propose would have to record the fact that our expe-
ditionary force to Abyssinia had to be supplied with Maria
Theresa dollars, of which none were to be obtained in the
market, these being the only coins received by the natives of
that country. The Austrian Government had to be applied to
by the British Government, and the coins had to be specially
struck for us at the Vienna mint

The Compradors, of whom I have just now spoken, are
important people in Hong Kong. I visited their club, where I
was most hospitably received, and found it second only in
splendour to that of the opium-farmers. The latter are so rich
that the entrance fee to their club is fixed at ioo/., and their
club is fitted up with a combination of Chinese comforts and
English qomforts which is far from being disagreeable,

604 GREAT EH BRITAIN. [CHAP. xxr.

The temptation to describe the city of Canton, and the
extraordinary sights to be seen in its thronged streets must be
resisted by me, because they have been described over and
over again. Even the memories of the splendid hospitalities of
the Dutch Governor-General of "India," at the palace of
Buitenzorg, have not obscured those of my stay at the Tartar
General's Yamun in the military quarter of Canton. I know
no city, so easily accessible, which is so unlike every other in
the world. Very little foreign influence is observable in its
streets except, indeed, in the shops, where " valuable old blue "
is being manufactured and sold for the English market, and in
the adoption of magenta and other hideous dyes in the new
silks. The Chinese seem to have taught us their colours, and
learnt ours, we gaining by the exchange. English influence in
Canton is seen in one way, as to which there may be some
difference of opinion. Our excellent and able Consul, Sir
Brooke Robertson,* has for many years been in the habit cf
drilling a battery of Tartar artillery and a brigade of Tartar
infantry, belonging to the Chinese Government, to serve as his
guard ; but it is doubtful whether the Imperial Government has
not taken advantage of his kindness, and of the services of his
clever sergeant-major, to pass through Canton a large number
of troops who have received European training in this way. The
Tartar troops at Canton are armed with Sniclers,they are splendid
men, and as solid as our guards. It is to be hoped that English
troops may not have to face them in any future war. Should
such a war at any time unfortunately take place, I believe that
it would be necessary that we should take China under our care,
so far as her army and customs are concerned. Instead of
taking Pekin, and levying a war contribution upon China, it
would be wiser to hold the ports, to collect the Customs by
English officers, and to continue to support the throne of China,
by whatever dynasty it might be occupied, as the only symbol
of order by which it would be possible to prevent anarchy and
protect trade. I have used the words, " whatever dynasty
might occupy the throne," because the secret societies which are
spreading throughout the Chinese Empire are believed to intend
\Q SQt a native dynasty upon the Tartar throne. The wearing
9 £STO\V, qnhanpily.

Afr. Jtxv.j bKGLlsti tifFLVtitfcB IxV CHINA. 66$

Of pigtails by the Chinese is, as is well known, an emblem of
their subjection to the Tartar dynasty, and the cutting off of
pigtails, which is spreading through the Empire like a
mysterious epidemic, is supposed by many to be the work of
the White Lily Society, and to indicate the corning of a
revolution. The policy of China would, however, I believe, be
much the same were a native sovereign to be crowned at Pekin
in place of a Tartar emperor.

The relations of Canton and Hong Kong are always some-
what strained. One of the greatest difficulties of Hong Kong
is, that it is an asylum for all the blackguards of Canton, who
are far from few in number. Whenever a man commits a
crime in Canton he flies naturally to Hong Kong, to be under
the British flag. The Chinese officials follow their criminals
sometimes, and claim their extradition, which we are often
unable to accord, for fear lest they should be political offenders.
Mandarins have been known to suborn false witness on the
" Hill of Peace," as the worst portion of the Chinese town at
Hong Kong is named, and to pretend that refugees, who were
in fact concerned in a rebellion, were thieves and forgers.
The turbulent nature of the population of both towns is seen by
the fact that the river steamers, running from the one to the
other city, are forced to keep their second-class passengers
below, with an iron grating over each hatchway, and with
sailors at each grating, revolver in hand, to prevent the
possibility of the passengers plundering the ship, as once
occurred. Hong Kong is an admirably policed city, and is a
thoroughly well-kept and well-governed place. Its garrison is
strong enough to take and hold Canton, the largest city in the
Chinese Empire, in spite of the Tartar troops ; but the Chinese
can ruin Hong Kong whenever they please by the peaceful
process of building a railway. A railway from the north, with
a terminus opposite to the excellent anchorage of the Bogae,
would cause the rise of a Chinese port which would destroy Hong
Kong. When our merchants talk of " opening " China, we
should remember that while the great English houses in China
would gain in a thousand ways by such a change, English trade,
as a whole, would suffer. The making of railroads throughout
China will: in all probability, be accompanied by the starting

606 G&EATE& ^ttlTAlN. [ciuf. xxV,

of local manufactures upon an enormous scale. If ever our
Eastern trade is ruined there is a future for many of the men,
and for much of the capital employed in it, in the direction and.
support of manufacturing establishments in the Treaty Ports
and in the coal-bearing provinces of China ; but it must never
be forgotten for one moment that the gain of these men would
be the loss of Lancashire.

Hong Kong cannot be considered by itself; Singapore in
many ways stands on the same footing. Both these cities,
though called " colonies," are in fact nothing but free ports,
depending on the trade of countries not under the British flag.
The future of these depot towns is a gloomy one, I fear. Trade
is yearly becoming more direct. In old days, if Australia
wanted coffee, and to pay for it in flour, she sent her flour to
England, and the tropical colonies sent coffee to England by
ships which called at depot ports ; both the trades were
carried on in English ships, and the profits of both were for
England. Now, to take one example out of many, Java, as I
found when I was there, sends sugar and coffee direct to
Australia, and receives directly in exchange flour, butter, horses,
leather, preserved meat, and wool. Still, while the outlook is
bad for all depot ports, it is less gloomy for Singapore, Malacca,
and Penang than it is for Hong Kong. The rich Malay
Peninsula, in which these British settlements are lost, ought to
be British soil, so hopeless is it to preserve between the Chinese
and native populations of the independent states that peace
without which life and property cannot be protected, mines
worked, or trade developed. I will not go into the Perak
question, and will only say that I believe that the Singapore
merchants are right in demanding the annexation of the Penin-
sula. As in 1874 and 1875 I strongly opposed the annexation
of Fiji, it may be thought that I am guilty of inconsistency in
advocating that of hitherto independent Malay States. There
is annexation and annexation. In Fiji we were going for the
first time to a country in which our Government, as such, had
never interfered. The case of the Malay Peninsula rather
resembles that of the Fanti Confederation upon the Gold Coast.
There has been British protection of a country in which slavery
exists, and in which Chinese and British subjects are constantly

. xxv.} MGLlStt IXFLUENCE IN CllLVA. 607

at war with the Malays. Rapine, piracy, cruel debt-slavery of
innocent children, and gross misrule exist throughout the
Malay Peninsula. We have not now for the first time to con-
sider whether we will interfere with this state of things. We
did interfere by appointing residents a long time back, and are
made responsible for evils which we cannot check. Whether
we annex the Malay Peninsula, of which there now seems no
chance, or whether we do not, the future of Singapore seems
less doubtful than the future of Hong Kong. The advance of
Sumatra in material prosperity under the Dutch rule must bring
some additional trade to Singapore. Already the tobacco of
Dhelhi, in Sumatra, is making for itself a name which will soon
stand second only to Cuba ; but this again is a trade which
will not much benefit our Straits Settlements, nor any depot
ports, for the tobacco will be sent straight home. I had a very
interesting conversation at Penang with a Chinese merchant,
whose family has been established there for a long time. He
was hot for the colonization of the Malay Peninsula, and told
me that which I believe is true, that his countrymen, swarming
in under our rule, would make of that country one of the richest
on the face of earth.

My visit to the Straits was but a flying one, for a journey to
Java was interpolated in its midst, a dream of Mangosteensand
thunderstorms, of Dutch palaces with acres of orchids, ponds
full of Victoria Regias, and butterflies as big as birds. It is as
strange that more English travellers do not visit Java for its
beauty, as that more do not visit Canton for its political and
social interest. Newer scenes cannot be found. From the
moment of embarkation upon dirty steamers, crowded with
Dutch ladies in bare feet and native dress, to cross a sea that
is covered with floating palm-trees from the Sumatra rivers, to
that of disembarkation in that lovely tropical forest, doited with
houses here and there, which is called the city of Batavia, all is
fresh even to the experienced traveller's eye. The system of
the Dutch, the afternoon stillness of Buitenzorg Palace, a sort
of tropical Versailles, the great rumbling coaches drawn by six
pied-rats of ponies upon the levels, and dragged by eight great
tawny buffaloes up the hills, the deafening screeching of the
beetles, the tree-ferns of Sandnglaya, the " walking-flowers," of

6og GtiEATER £PJTAL\\ [CHAP, xxt,

pink-orchid-insects, feeding on live butterflies, which they will
not take dead; all these tempt the traveller to linger over
descriptions of things which cannot be described. The Dutch
statistics are Eloquent as to the nature of the country which
they occupy. Java is not large, but within its limits 300 people
every year are eaten by carnivora, 200 by the crocodiles, 100
killed by the rhinoceros, 500 killed by lightning, while 100 die
from snake-bites, and a varying number by earthquakes and
volcanic action. The traveller journeying under Dutch pro
tection along the well-known roads is safe against most of the
accidents which destroy the natives of the land ; but the hos-
pitalities by which he is surrounded, combined with want of
knowledge of the language, prevent him from making observa-
tions upon the nature of the Dutch rule which are of any worth.
It is certain that the Dutch have killed art in Java. They do
but little for education, and the doubtful question is whethei
under their administration the material position of the people
has been improved.

Whatever may be the faults of British rule, and however much
it may be true, as is asserted by the Dutch, that we more
frequently provoke rebellions by injudicious conduct than do
they, it is certain that our annexation of the Malay Peninsula
would not produce that abject degradation of the people before
their rulers which is too evident in tropical countries occupied
by the Dutch.

INDEX.

ABORIGINES, American treatment
of, contrasted with English, 85,
86 ; extirpation of, in Tasmania,
346, 349 ; hostility of English
military to, 349 ; contempt of the
settlers for, ib.

Acapulco (set Mexico).

Adelaide, climate of, 359, 361 ;
curious fact relating to wheat
trade, 360; "the farinaceous
village," so called by Victorians,
ib. ; character of the buildings,
dress, and people, $60, 3^' >
pretty suburbs, 361.

Afghanistan, as neutral ground
against Russia, 488-490.

Agra (see India : — Moharaedan
Cities).

Akashi, castle of, 586-588.

Alabama claims, feeling of Ameri-
cans respecting, 211 ; theiropinion
of England's refusal to arbitrate
on the entire question, 211, 212.

Albany, harbour, scenery and
natives of, 368.

Alexandria, French influence in,
560.

Allahabad (see India : — Mohamedan
Cities).

Alleghanies, eastern and western
slopes of, 72-

America, wear and tear of life in,
38, 39 5 indoor life of children,
ib ; unhealthiness of tilling virgin
soil, &c., ib. ; politics discarded
by the most intellectual men in
the slave-ruling days, 41 ; new
map of the States, 51 ; extension

of United States influence in the
Canadian dominion, 51 ; insecure
relations between Canada and
United States, 53 ; Canada a
cause of jealousy in United States
towards Great Britain, 55 ; splen-
did appropriations for educa-
tional purposes, 63 ; railways pre-
ceding population, 68 ; North
America, conformation of, as
compared with other continents,
72 ; faults of children in, 175,
176; difficulty of forming an
idea of America, 217; apparent
Latinization of, ib ; democracy
of, different from that of Aus-
tralia, 316 ; social difference, il>.

American Desert, the, 94 ; alkali
dust, 94, 131, 144.

Union, not likely to fall to

pieces, So, 192, 247 ; tendency
of the time to great powers not
small ones, 192 ; interest of all
the States in union, 192, 193 ;
real danger from the seizure of
the Atlantic coast cities by the
Irish, 193 ; shape of North
America, rendering almost im-
possible the existence of distinc-
tive peoples within it, 219.

-opinion of Great liritain,

France, and Russia, 195 ; of the
Feniansand Irish complaints, 210 ;
the Alabama claims, 211 — 213.
-Parties. Republican and

Democracic, 199, 200; Radical
watchfulness needed to guard the
country against great dangers,
2 li

610

INDEX.

201 ; great issue involved in the
struggle between the parties, ib. ;
possibility of the future abolition
of the Presidency, 202.

American Sensitiveness to English
opinion, 214 ; an instance of the
injustice done to Americans during
the war, ib. ; their firmness while
the Trent affair was pending, ib,

Ann Arbor institute, men sent by it
to the war, 63 ; officers returned
to complete their studies, ib.

Artemisia (see Sage-brush.)

Artemus Ward, joke of, to Elder
Stenhouse, 1 08 ; in Virginia city,
140.

Asaksa : religious fair at temple of,
581-582.

Athletic sports in United States ;
rowing, skating, etc., 38, 39 ;
cricket, 40.

Atlantic States of America (see
Western States).

Attar of roses (see India : — Um-
riisur.)

Auckland, effect on, of the banana-
tree, 19.

Aurora, in California, 146.

Austin, the pleasures and immuni-
ties of a Western tour, 135 ;
Chinese quarter of, 135, 136; a
farewell "swop," 136.

Australasia, misuse of the term in
England, 286.

Australia ( see Coal : Rival
Colonies) ; youth of Australia
and their future, 289 ; climate
of, ib. ; eager democracy of.
ib. ; different from the repub-
licanism of the United States, ib.
concentration of populations in
towns, 296 ; poetic native names,
306, 307 ; seasons in, 307 ; in-
fluence of towns in government,
314 ; social differences between
Australia and America, 316 ;
statesmen of, 3*7 > wines and
vineyards, 343 ; prospects of. 379 ;
progress and extent of, ib. ; ob-
stacles to the peopling of the
whole of, 380 ; want of railroads,
ib ; small amount of agricultural
land as compared with extent of
territory, 381 ; moral and intel-

lectual health of, il>. ; loVe o!
mirth, and absence of the
American downrightness, &c., in
pursuit of truth, ib. ; waste of
food, ib. ', manners, &c., ib. ;
dre.-s, ib. ; imitation of home
customs, 381, 382 ; the Univer-
sity of Sydney, 382 ; its Conser-
vatism as distinguished from the
Radicalism of the Western Uni-
versities, 383 ; small freeholds,
gaining on large tenancies, 383 ;

Australia West (see Convicts).

South, position, climate

and extent of, 359 ; probability
of becoming the granary of the
Pacific colonies, 360 ; production
of wheat, 362 ; the land system,
362, 363 ; regulated migration,
363 ; Scotch and German immi-
grants, 365 ; political life of the
colony, 366 ; expedition to fix a
new capital for the northern
territory, ib. ; possibility that the
north may be found a land of
gold, 367 ; irom South to West
Australia, 367, 368.

BALLARAT (see Victorian Ports).

Ballot (see Tasmania).

Banana-tree, injurious effect of, in
affording food without labour in
the Southern States of America,
Panama, Ceylon, Mexico, Auck-
land, &c., 19 ; a devil's ageir,
ib. ; danger to Florida and Louis-
iana, 20.

Benares (see India).

Bendigo (see Sandhurst).

Benicia, former rival of San Fran-
cisco, 174.

Bentham, his philosophy in Utah,
101.

Bhawulpore (see India : — Native
States).

Black Mountains (see Rocky Moun-
tains), 93.

Bombay (see India : — Bombay).

Boston, population extremely Irish,
29, 30; brains v. brawn in, 38 ;
its Elizabethan English and old
English names, 42 ; its readiness
during the war, 44.

Brannan, the chief mover in re-

INDEX.

611

pressing disorders by lynch law
in California, 161 ; his speech to
his fellow-citizens, 163.

Brigham Young, Elder Evans, the
"Shaker's" opinion of, 59; a
conversation of three hours with,
100 ; blessing at parting, ib. ;
" Is Brigham sincere ?" 100 ; his
position as a Prophet, while in
fact a utilitarian deist, IOI ; his
practical revelations, ib. ; and
manner of announcing them, ib. ;
his definition of the highest in-
spiration, 102 ; his position
among his people, ib. ; his im-
mense personal influence, 103 ;
his sons sent out, each to work
his own way in the World, 122.

Brisbane (see Queensland).

British Columbia, proposed sale of,
to the U. States. 51.

Buffalo herds on the plains, 77 ;
skeletons of, ib. ; buffalo tracts,
79 ; migration, 90 ; traces in the
Rocky Mountains, 96.

Bullcr, the (see Hokitika).

CAIRO, dirt and degredation of,
558 ; slave market, ib. ; punish-
ment by selection, 559 ; mis-
government of the country, 559,
560 (see also French in Egypt).

Calcutta (see India).

California and Nevada, rectification
of frontiers of, 145.

the terms Golden State and

El Dorado well applied to, 148 ;
scenery, 151 ; names given to
places by diggers, 152, 153 ;
luxury, &c., 154; scenery, 156,
157 ; duels, 158 ; Episcopalian-
ism nourishing in, 178 ; its pros-
pects in the Pacific, ib. ; nitro-
glycerine, the nightmare of, 179 ;
the valley of, 180 ; position of,
on the overland route to the
Pacific, 189 ; extent of, ib. ;
climate, ib. ; coal of, 280.

California!! celebrities, portraits of,

139-

Cambridge, Mass, (see Harvard).

Canada, population mainly French
in Lower Canada, 47 ; customs
and feelings of old France pre-

. served, 48 ; the only true French
colony in the world guarded by
English troops against inroads of
English race, ib. ; newspapers of,
ib. ; inactivity of life as compared
with that in New England, ib. ;
influence of Hudson Bay Co. ;
religion and politics, 49 ; dis-
union of French and Irish
Catholics, 50 ; French support
of the Confederation scheme, ib. ;
Fenians in, ib. ; need of British
Columbia to the Confederation,
ib. ; Scotchmen in Upper Canada,
ib. ; difficulties in the way of
real confederation, 51, 52; emi-
gration to, 52 ; size exaggerated
in maps, ib. ; emigration from,
to the United States, 53 ; jealousy
of the Canadian States, ib. ; their
dislike to America, 54 ; difficulty
of defending, ib. ; protective
duties, ib. ', advantages of inde-
pendence, ib. ; narrowness of
English views respecting, 55 ;
belief of the Canadians that they
possessed the only possible road
to China for the trade of the
future, 64.

Cannibalism amongst the Maories,
276, 277.

Canterbury, New Zealand, Episco-
palian colony, 241, 242 ; pro-
vince of, divided both politically
and geographically, 242 ; an-
tagonism between the Christ-
church people and the diggers,
ib. ; dignified Episcopalian char-
acter of Christchurch, 244 ; its
importation of rooks from Eng-
land to caw in the elm-trees of
the Cathedral close, while
Hokitika imports men, ib.

Canton, high efficiency of Tartar
troops, 604 ; strained relations
with Hong Kong, 605.

Capital, future, of the United States,

73-

Carolina, North, 5.
Carolina, South, probable future of

negro in, 20.

Cartier, early explorer, 64.
Cashmere (see India : — Colonization

and Native States).

• Hi

CIS

Caste, assailed by railways and tele-,
graph, 417, 418; difficulty of
discovering the opinion of a
Hindoo, 425 ; British ignorance
of the real feeling of the people,
426 ; census as viewed by the
Hindoos, ib. ; its revelations with
respect to caste and "callings,"
427 ; beggars, 428 ; superstition,
ib ; a play at demonology, 428,
429 ; the praying wheel, 429 ; a
saint's privileges in the days of
the Empeior Akbar, ib. ; strength
of caste, 431 ; missionaries and
Hindoo reformers, ib. ; more a
custom than a form of religion,
431, 432 ; Hindoo deists, ib. ;
Christians, 433 ; different posi-
tion of native Catholics and Pro-
testants, ib. ; fewness of native
Christians, ib. ; infanticide, 434 ;
remarkable changes in the last
few years, 435 ; progress of the
spirit of Christianity, ib.

Catholicism (see Religion).

Caucus, King, 205 ; Americans, on
the derivation of the term, 206.

Cawnpore (see India : — Mohamedan
Cities).

Cemeteries, Hollywood, Richmond,
13 ; Lone Mountain Cemetery in
California, the most beautiful in
America, 173; other American
cemeteries, ib.

Census, curious results of, in India,

427-435-

Centre, government from the, 70 ;
ancient and modern views of, 70,
71 ; centre of the United States,
72.

Ceylon (see Kandy).

Ceylon, harbour of Point de Galle,
396 ; the street •; of Point de
Galle, ib. ; women and men of,
ib. ; mixture of races, 397 ;
American missionaries, quaint
humour of, ib. ; beggars, ib. ;
gem and jewel sellers, trade in
precious stones, ib. ; British
soldiers in white, 398 ; heat at
night, ib. ; the morning gun, 399 ;
character of the Cinghalese, ib. ;
translucent water, and brilliance
of colour at the bottom, 400 ; a

Cinghalese dinner, ib. ; a stag'fi*
coach ride to Co'ombo, ib. ; aspect
of the fine road, crowded with all
ranks of the people, 401 ; one
continuous village, ib, ; dense
population and food of the people
on the coast, ib. ; Colombo, 402 ;
trees and foliage, ib. ; a garden
scene, ib. ; Fort, or " European
town " of, ib. ; the most graceful
street in the world, ib. ; the peak
where Adam mourned his son a
hundred years, ib. ; Ceylon Coffee
Company's Establishment, 403 ;
steam factory, ib. ; French Catho-
lic priests, ib. ; their success, ib. ;
the old Dutch quarter, 404 ; rapid
changes from heat to cold, ib.

Chaudiere Falls (Ottawa), 56.

Cheyennes (see Indians).

Chicago (jd?San Francisco and Chi-
cago, &c.).

Chickahominy, the, scene of M'Clel-
lan's defeat, 9.

China, prejudicial influence o!
foreigners in, 591 ; policy of sup-
porting the central government
and integrity of the empire, 591,
592 ; injudicious behaviour of
missionaries, 592 ; London Mis-
sionary Society, 592, 593 ; transit
dues difficulties, 593-595 ; the in-
land residence dispute, 595, 596 ;
liberal interpretation of treaties
by, ib. ; show adoption of Euro-
pean civilization by, as compared
with Japan, 596, 597 ; due mainly
to the magnitude of the change
and congested state of the country,
598 ; the Yunan affair, 598, 599 ;
opening of coal mines, 599 ; En-
glish action in trade matters
hampered by other powers, ib. ;
climate of Hong Kong, 600 ;
Coolie traffic, 60 1 ; export
trade to, will soon cease, 602 ;
abolition of English mint at Hong
Kong, 602, 603 ; dollars, 603 ;
Canton, 604 ; strained relation,
of Canton and Hong Kong, 605,
6or) ; the future of Hong KOI g,
606 ; Chinese coolies in the
Southern States of America, 19 ;
first seen at Aust:n, 135 ; "one

INDEX.

613

mm and a Chinaman," 182 ; a
Chinese theatre, ib. ; peculiarity
of its drama, ib. ; the second
month and third act of the play,
183 ; a Chinese restaurant, 184 ;
saucer and chopsticks for the
Author, ib. ; Chinese supper, ib. ;
gaming-houses, 185 ; Chinese in-
dustry and cleanliness, ib. ; simi-
larity of faces common to all
coloured races, ib. ; benevolent
societies, 186 ; wealth of mer-
chants, ib. ; prejudice against, on
the part of the Americans, as
also on that of the Australians,
186, 187 ; Chinese expostulations
against the prejudice, 187 ; cow-
ardice of, ib. ; practical slavery
of, in California, ib ; the Irish of
Asia, ib. ; capability for work,
ib. ; the serious side of the Chinese
problem, 188.

Chinese, first arrival among, 136;
in California, 151 ; a tiny Chinese
theatre, 152; as taxpayers, ib.;
at Melbourne, 296 ; at Sandhurst,
302 ; anti-Chinese mobs, ib. ; un-
just treatment of, 303 ; marriage
between, and Irish women, ib. ;
character of, as citizens in Aus-
tralia, ib. ; restaurants of, 304 ;
in the Australian labour-market,

33f. 332, 336, 337-

Churches (see Religion).

Cinnabar (see Quicksilver).

Civilization, limits of, Westward,
74 ; coaching between Virginia
City and Placerville, 146.

Coal in United States, 71, 72 ; in
connection with San Francisco's
future, 190 ; in Vancouver Island,
Chili, and New South Wales,

279 ; in New Zealand, 279, 280 ;
in China, Borneo, California,

280 ; Tasmania, Japan, New
South Wales, Vancouver Island
and Saghalien, 281 ; in New
South Wales, 294, 295 ; its im-
portance to Australia, 294 ; value
to Sydney, 295 ; mines in For-
mos i and China, 599.

Coalville, the Mormon Newcastle,

98.
Cocoa-nut tree, 19.

Cocoas, Island of, kingdom of John

Ross, 395.
Coffee (see Kandy).
Colonial Government (see Squatter

and Democracy).
Colonies, taxation of England in aid

of wealthy, 385, 386 ; of Canada,

386 ; exclusion of English produc-
tions from, ib. ; cost to England,
ib. ; refusal of the, to contribute
towards the cost of Imperial wars,
ib. ; readiness of the old American
colonists to do so, ib. ; position of
Imperial soldiers in the colonies,

387 ; absurdity of supposing that
. the Australians would be in dan-
ger if separated from England,

388 ; our defence of, necessarily
of least value when most needed,
ib. ; and really a source of weak-
ness to the Colonies, ib. ; separa-
tion no loss to England, 389;
trade with Canada and with the
United States of America, ib. ;
with Egypt, ib. ; question of the
outlet for population, 389, 390 ;
strength of great and small
states, 390 ; colonies preventing
the insularity of mind that might
belong to a nation of a limited
area, ib. ; separation not to be
desired if union can be continued
on fair terms to the mother land,
and with advantage to the
colonies, 391.

Coloradan farm, 79 ; a Coloradan
boast, 82; Coloradan "boys," a
fine handsome race, 92 ; strange
insects, ib. ; criminals, 114, 115 ;
prison inspection, 115.

Colorado, rival Governors of, 80 ;
great idea of Gilpin the Pioneer,
ib.; extent and beauty of country,
89-91 ; cattle breeding, 92 ;
red rocks of, 93 ; Upper Colorado
or Green River, 95 ; lynch law
in, 170.

Columbo (see Ceylon, Maritime).

Columbus in Nebraska, claims of,
as the seat of Government, 71,

73-
Conservative, Colonial, what is a,

309.
Convicts (see Tasmania), settlement

614

INDEX.

of West Australia 368 ; petition
to be made a penal settlement,
ib. ; convicts or emancipists in
the colony, 369 ; population of
West Australia, ib ; convict
escapes, ib. ; punishment, ib. ;
"bolters for a change," 370;
murder to escape convict labour,
ib. ; transportation, past and
present, 370, 371 ; entire
colonies formed of convicts, 371 ;
" society " at Botany Bay, ib. ;
all professions, &c , filled by
convicts, ib. ; petition from Tas-
mania against transportation, ib. ;
fearful demoralization of the
colony, 372 ; free female labour-
ers sent out, 373 ; the assign-
ment system, ib. ; crime in the
colony, 374 ; bushrangers, ib. ;
end of the system, ib ; demoral-
ization of the convict voyage,
375 ; horrid conversation, ib.;
the hope that Tasmania may be
purified by the gold-find and free
selection, ib. ; the transportation
system, ib. ; its cost, 376 ; its
severity to the least guilty, ib. ;
abolition of system, 376 ; the
future, 376, 377.

Co-operative labour, negro (see
Davis).

Cotton trade of Bombay, 524.

Climber land and Merrimac, wrecks
of, 4.

Currency, strange natural objects
used for, 450.

DAIMIOS (j

Danites, 102 ; Porter Rockwell,
chief of, 126; strange stories of,
ib. ; ' bands organised to defend
the first presidency of the Mor-
mons, ib. ; their reported deeds,
ib.

Davidson, Mount, Nevada, 142 ;
its silver mines, 143.

Davis, Joseph (brother of Jefferson
Davis), scheme of, for negro co-
operative labour, 21.

Democracy (see Squatters), demo-
cratic tendency of Mormonism
122; in Australia, 290 : colont.il
314; payment of members, ib. ;

reasons for, ib. ; the Catholic
party in power, ib. ; driven from
office on the question of appoint-
ing only Irishmen to the police,
315 ; the O'Shaughnessy Govern-
ment, ib. ; Victorians mending
the constitution, ib. ; democracy
of Victoria not American but
English in tone, 316; difference
between the democracy of Vic-
toria and New South Wales, 318 ;
earnestness of colonial democracy
in the cause of education, ib. ;
clanger of the crushing influence
or democracy upon individuality,
320 ; no great party in the
colonies at all like the great
Republican party of America,
321 ; the future of Australian
Democracy, ib. ; tendency of the
women to cling to the old
"colonial court" society, ib. ;
democratic principles in Aus-
tralia, 322.

Denver, letter from, 74 ; swarms
with Indians, 80, 81 ; scenery and
climate, 82 ; vigilance committees
in, 170.

Dependencies, English ; proposed
Abyssinian colony, 553 ; free
trade forced on China and Japan,
ib. ; future policy of England
with respect to China, 553, 554 ;
profit and loss of our dependen-
cies> 555 > tne Dutch system, ib. ;
deliberately rejected by the En-
glish people, ib. ; cost of several
dependencies, ib. ; India's part in
the Abyssinian war, ib, ; the re-
tention of dependencies and colo-
nies on different grounds, 556 ;
India as a nursery of warriors and
statesmen, ib. ; the advantage to
a nation of having world-wide
interests to govern, ib. ; seizure
of Perim, ib. ; amusing incident
of, ib.

Deseret (the Mormon country),
" Land of the bee," Il6.

Devil's Gate, Nevada, 143.

Diego Mendoza's discovery of Cali-
fornia, 148.

Dixon, Mr. Ilepworth, meeting
with, at St. Louis, 69 ; illness of.

INDEX.

015

So ; name in Nebraska, 93 ;

puling from the Author, 125.
Dollars, curious facts relating to,

603.
Drama, Chinese, peculiarity of,

182.
Dust or dirt storms in the plains of

United States, 78, 79 ; at Sydney,

290 ; and Jullundhur, 472.
Dutch element of population gone

from New York, 29.
Dutch gap, 7.

Education, advanced state of, in
Michigan, 58, 59 ; democratic
nature of Michigan university, 59;
no competition allowed at it,
ib. ; system of election, 63 ;
studies adopted ; 6l, great atten-
tion paid to, in United States, 63 ;
"godless," in Australia, 315 ;
earnestness of the colonial demo-
cracy in the cause of, 318; the
Australian as compared with the
English view of the real use of,
318, 319; illiterate men in the
colonies striving to educate their
children, 319.

El Dorado (see California).

Emerson, his disapproval of slavery,
41 ; his opinion of the vitality of
Mormonism, 123.

Emigrants, classes of, that do not
succeed, and that do, 292 ; ten-
dency to hang about great towns
in Ameiica and Australia, 295.

English, old, names in the South-
ern States of America, n, 12;
and familie*, 12 ; in Boston, 42 ;
flowers at the New Zealand dig-
gings, 234 ; officers at the New
Zealand diggings, 239.

English race, pushing on towards the
setting sun, 192; esteem of Ameri-
cans for Englishmen, 211, 215;
vigour of, in the United States,
217 ; disappearance of other races
opposed to it, 217, 218 ; change
of, in Ameiica, 218 ; predomin-
ance of the English element in the
United States, 223, 224 ; in the
struggle of races, 564 ; extent of
districts ruled by the English
race, ib. } the Saxon has out-

stripped the Muscovite, 565 ;
alliance on equal terms with
America, ib. ; prospects of the
race as a whole, ib. ; position of
English in Egypt, 558, 563;
England's work in the future,
5.62, 563-
Episcopalianism (see Religion).

FENIAN Brother?, the, in New
York, 30, 31 ; in Upper Canada,
50 ; meetings of, in New York,
Chicago, and Canada, ib. ; Iri^h
support of, ib. ; nature of Irish
antipathy to Great Britain, ib. ;
its probable effect, ib ; the Irish
at home not Fenians in the
American sense, 209 ; land laws
in Ireland, ib. ; unsatisfactory
position of Irishmen in America,
210; Fenian agreement to drop
the word "English" as applied
to language, and to use only the
term "American," ib. ; opinion
of Americans representing Feni-
anism, ib. ; the raid into Canada
and the St. Alban's raid, 211 ;
Fenian powtr owing to the anti-
English feeling of the Demo-
cratic party and the Alabama
claims, ib.

Fly, predominance of the English
over the New Zealand, born in
New Zealand, 274-276.

Florida, banana in, 20 ; probable
future of negro in, ib.

Florida privateer, under water, 6.

Forged notes, novel agreement of
Colorado and Nevada people
respecting, 141.

Freedom, found only in English
homes, 547.

and slavery, their contrary

effects, 10.

Free labour and slave labour, 16.

Freemasonry of travel, 134.

Fremont, the Pathfinder, his report
of Utah, 98 ; his conquest in the
West, 173.

French, attempt of, to precede us in
New Zealand and Australia, 356 ;
possessions in India, 415 ; the
island of Perim, 556 ; France in
th? east, 560 ; state of Egypt,

61G

INDEX.

ib. ; preponderance of French in-
fluence there, ib. ; the Suez
Canal, ib. ; its commercial success
not of first importance to the
French Government, ib. ; French
power played off by the King of
Egypt against England and Russia
560, 561 ; prospects of the canal,
561 ; and use to England, ib. ;
proposed neutralization of Egypt,
ib. ; French aims in Egypt, ib. ;
Comtist theories, ib. • national-
ism and cosmopolitanism, 562 ;
the work of England as distin-
guished from that of France, ib.

GALLE (see Ceylon).

Ganges and Gangetic plains, mono-
tonous character of, 416.

Geelong (see Victorian Ports).

Germans, justice-loving, their des-
cendants in Western America,
167 ; in Philadelphia, 178 ; their
influence on the religious thought
of America, 222, 223 ; in S. Aus-
tralia, 361; as immigrants, 365.

Gilpin, Governor, 80, 89, 93.

Gold and silver diggers, contempt
of the former for the latter, 143.

Gold, discovery of, in California,
148 ; first found in the American
river, Jan. 1848, 148-151 ; dis-
covery of, in any part of the
world, certain to be followed by
English government there, 192 ;
in Victoria, and influence on its
circumstances, 297-300 ; fields
at Sandiiurst, 302 ; reported
discovery in N. W. Australia,

367.

Golden City (see San Francisco).

Golden Gate, the gap in the Con-
tra Costa range of mountains by
which the Pacific breeze rushes on
San Francisco, 176; beneficial
effects of the breeze, ib. ; curious
facts connected with it, 176-177.

Grand Plateau, overtaken on by
a company of "overlanders,"
131 ; compliments in the desert,
ib.

Grant, General, 7; the secret of
his success, 10.

Salt Lake Qity, l?9 \ the lake

gradually sinking, 1 30; its extent,

145-

Greely, Horace, 130, 146.

Guatemala, its volcanoes and earth-
quakes, 216.

HAMPTON ROADS, 4.

Hangtown, (now Placerville) where
lynch law was inaugurated, 152.

Hank Monk's "piece," 146; a
reckless drive, ib.

Harvard College (Cambridge,
Mass.), foundation of, 36; the
Harvard family, ib. ; defects of
the college, ib. ; its need of a ten
days' revolution, ib. ; hope of re-
form, 37 ; new constitution, ib. ;
outdoor sports, 38, 40 ; Alumni
celebration, ib. ; New England
love for, ib. ; old students, ib. ;
past reform, 41 ; its noble bands
of volunteers for the war, ib. ;
classic repose of the town, 42.

Heights, the, among the " Nameless
Alps " of Western America, sup-
per on, at 8 A.M., 131.

Himalayan yak (see Yak).

Hindostanee, the mixed language of
India, 445-446.

Hobarton, (see Tasmania).

Hodson, Captain, his shooting down
the sons of the last Mogul Em-
peror, 443.

Hokitika and the Buller — new gold
fields of the colony, 232 ; nature
of the voyage from Melbourne to
Hokitika, 323 ; a fine sunrise, ib. ;
the bar, ib; a "toss" for a
newspaper, 234 ; the hotel, ib. ;
English flowers among the dig-
gers, ib. ; the diggings, 235 ; soil
and climate of, ib. ; political eco-
nomy on board the steamer, ib. ;
rapid rise of Hokitika, 236 ; its
excellent roads, ib. ; the product
of convict labour, 237 ; the term
"convict " made to include per-
sons committed for the smallest
offences, ib. ; bushrangers, ib. ;
New Zealand Thugs, ib. ; a fa-
vourite amusement at the diggings
239 ; the new road from Hok;»
tika, 240,

INDEX.

617

Hollywood cemetery, 13.

Homestead Act (United States),
frauds on, 168, 169.

Hong Kong climate, 600 ; free
trade; 600, 6ol ; condition of
trade, 601, 602 ; abolition of
mint, 602, 603 ; commanders of,
603 ; strained relations with Can-
ton, 605 ; future of, 605, 606.

Hotel life in America, its effects on
women and children, 175.

Hudson Bay Company, the blight of
its monopoly, 49-51, impossibi-
lity of the Company resisting
American immigration, 51.

Hydrabad (see India : — Scinde).

INDIA, spelling of native names,

394-

• • Benares, early morning in,

418, 419 ; the Hindoo as a bab-
bler, 419 ; Temple of Sacred
Monkeys, ib. ; Queen's College
of native students, ib. ; observatory
of Jai Singh, and the Golden
Temple, 420 ; streets of Benares,
ib. ; banks of the Ganges, ib. ;
scenery, ib. : ornamentation of
pavilions, 421 ; taste in painting,
ib. ; people taken to the banks of
the Ganges to die, ib. ; similar
customs among the Cinghalese
and Maories, 422 ; immorality of
the holy city, ib. ; conservatism
of the Oriental mind, 423 ; few-
ness of Europeans in India, ib ; a
hot white fog, ib. ; demoralization
of English soldiers, ib. ; brandy-
and-soda-water, 424 ; Benares a
type of India, ib. ; position of
missionaries in, ib.

- Bombay, arrival at, 523 »

vegetation, ib. ; harbour of, ib. ;
weak defences of, ib. ; rapid rise
of, owing to the cotton trade,
524 ; hard work in the mercantile
nouses, 525 ; Scothmen in Bom-
bay, ib. ; compensations of Bom-
bay life, ib. ; the bazaar, 526 ;
the Parsees, ib. ; their religion
and culture, ib. ; the stage as a
means of satirising English foibles,
527 ; a Parsee marriage, 528 ;
Ca.ves of ElephajUa, ib. ; bust of

the Hindoo Trinity, ib ; its gran-
deur, ib. ;

India: Calcutta, arrival at, 411 ;
the Massalah boat, ib. ; sighting
the Temple of Juggernauth, 412 ;
the Hoogly, ib. ; scenery on, ib. ;
palace of the ex-King of Oude,
ib. ; extravagance and debauchery
of the ex-King, ib. ; apprehension
of one of his wives for assisting
in, ib. ; general immorality of
wealthy natives in Calcutta, 413;
character of the Indian Govern-
ment, and its influence on the
popular life, ib. ; Government
House, and Calcutta buildings,
ib. ; hospitality of great mercan-
tile houses, 413, 414 ; mixed
population of Calcutta, 414 ; un-
sui lability for being the Indian
capital, 454.

— Colonization of, 456 ; at-
tempts at, made in six districts,
ib. ; Cashmere the best for Euro-
pean settlers, 457 ; civilians and
rulers of India jealous of settlers,
ib. ; dread of " low caste" En-
glishmen, 458 ; holding of landed
estates by Englishmen in India,
ib. ; English planters would assist
to give a healthy tone to the
social system, ib. ; indigo planta-
tions in Bengal, 459 ; two securi-
ties against the further degrada-
tion of India, ib.

English learning in, 535 ;

ignorance of the people, ib. ;
their high art a relic of a bygone
age, ib. ; apparent rapid decline
since the English arrived in India,
536 ; humiliation of the ruling
classes of the country, ib. ; what
should be the character of the
government of such a people, 537 ;
" India for the Indians," the
meaning of the cry, ib. ; necessary
radical reforms, 537, 538 ; trivial
character of those introduced a
few years ago, 538 ; importance
of naturalizing the English lan-
guage in India, ib. ; naturalization
of the Spanish language in Ame-
rica, ib. ; England's want of suo
tess in that particular, 539 ; early

618

INDEX.

abolition of slavery probably one
cause of it, ib ; our system of
government a dear one, ib. ; ser-
vile condition of native women,
540; false swearing, ib. ; small
amount of money spent in en-
couraging learning, ib.
India : England in the East different
from the England at home, 5^2
543 ; trial by jury and law courts,
543 ; the old school Hindoos and
the free-thinkers both opposed to
us, 544 ; superiority of Akbar's
police, ib. ; employment of
natives in higher offices, 545 ; a
Mohammedan protest against our
policy, ib. ; levelling tendency of
our competitive examinations,
546 ; hatred to English rule, the
hatred that Easterns always have
to their masters, ib. ; not a wish
for self-government, 547 ; the
Anglo-Saxon race in possession
of the only homes of freedom
known at the present time, ib. ;
freedom not understood by the
Hindoos, ib. ; consequences of
our leaving India, 548 ; prospects
of our government there, ib. ;
Anglo-Indian opposition to
government from London, 549 >
the creation of new governments
551 ; fundamental question,
whether we wish to hold India
for our prestige merely, or in the
interest of the people of Hindos-
tan, 552.

Gazette, value and variety of

contents of, 462-465 ; evidence
with respect to "ghaut-murder,"
465 ; evidence as to polyandry
and polygyny, in India, 466-
469.

• French possessions, Chan-
deruagore, 414, 415 ; Pondi-
chetry, 415.

• Lahore, appearance of, 479;

suburb of tombs, ib. ; Cabool
Gate, 480 ; English character-
istics of Lahore, ib. ; newspapers
of, ib. ; the rulers of Lahore,
482.

• Mohamedan cities of, 436 ;

Allahabad, ib, ; Cawnpore, 16. j

Lucknow, ib. ; beauty of Luck-
now, ib. ; stories of the mutiny,
437 ; ill-treatment of natives by
the English, ib. ; a notice in
hotels, 438 ; Anglo-Indian jokes,
ib. ; looting, ib. ; contempt for
native lives, 439 ; officers and
natives, ib. English cruelties in
Oude, 440 ; a war, not a rebellion
in Oude, ib. ; the Residency at
Lucknow, ib. ; rapid repair of the
wrecks of the rebellion, ib. ; Agra,
ib. ; the Taj Mahal and Pearl of
Mosques, 440, 441 ; Akbar's
draught-board and pieces, 441 ;
great works of the Mogul con-
querors, 442 ; contrast of Moha-
medan great cities, and those of
the three Presidencies, ib. ;
changes in Delhi, 443.

India : Native StateSj influx of
European settlers into Mysore,
456 ; need of irrigation in
country, 498 ; Moultan, 499 ; rail
and river, ib. ; State of Bhawul-
pore, 500 ; talk of annexation of,
ib, ; demoralization, ib. ; de-
generacy of ruling families, 501 ;
Eritish or native rule, ib. ;
reasons for believing that the
people know they are well off
under British rule, 502 ; mer-
chants and towns' people our
friends, ib. ; danger of interfering
with native customs, 503 ; the
Nepaulese during the mutiny, ib. ;
the State of Cashmere, ib. ; its
creation as a State, ib. ; grounds
for repurchase or annexation,
504 ; the Nizam, Scindia, the
Guicowar of Baroda, and Holkar,
ib. ; origin of present ruling
families, 505 ; effect of shutting
out the natives from the highet
branches of the English service,
506 ; present attitude of the na-
tives one of indifference and
neutrality, 507 ; the question of
future annexation, ib.

India, Our Army, 483 ; the Sikhs,
ib. ; questionable morality of the
present system of, ib. ; Russia our
only possible enemy from without,
485 ; her weakness as against

INDEX.

619

India, ib. ; taxation of the poor-
est country in the world for so
large an army, 486 ; our duty to
reduce the army, ib. ; employ-
ment of Sikhs gut of India, ib. ;
British officers, 487 ; danger to
English liberties from so large an
army in India, ib.

India: Overland routes, 515 ; Kur-
rachee, ib. ; character of chokedars,
516; a shibboleth for excluding
natives from the lines, ib. ; the
harbour of Kurrachee, 517 ;
Kurrachee the direct route from
Bombay, by the Euphrates valley
and Constantinople to London,
ib. ; the earliest known overland
route, ib. ; interest of a return of
trade to the Gulf route, 518;
difficulties in the way of, 519
-521 ; Scinde chieftains, 521, 522.

Poonah, suitability of, as

the capital of India, 455 ; Moha-
meclan Mohurrum, celebrated at,

529 ; the ascent by railway, 529,

530 ; the procession, 530, 531 ;
elegance and grace of the females,
532 ; the procession joined in by
the Hindoos and Christians as
well as Mohamedans, ib. ;
drunken British soldier.-;, 533 ;
Indian Mohamedans, their small
number and Hindoo feelings, ib.

Railways in oriental dress,

415 ; native independence of
railway time tables, 416, 417;
hurry to procure tickets, 417;
defective management, ib. ; effect
of railways on the state of the
country, ib. ; on caste, 417, 418;
and on destruction of forests, ib.

• Russian approach to, 488 ;

at Bokhara, ib. ; advice from dif-
ferent quarters as to the best
means for dealing with, 489 ;
opinion of a Syrian Pacha as to
England's proper cause and
interest in opposition to Russia
491-494 ; his view of our
relation to Turkey and Egypt,
492, 494 ; differences of Moslem
races, 493 ; opinion of old Indians
that Indian policy should rule
the policy of the nation, 494 ;

advance of Russia watched by the
natives, ib. ; advantages to India
of English government, if we can
raise up a people that will sup-
port our rule,495 ; relative strength
of Russia and India, 496, 497.

India, Simla, 444 ; a night ride up
the hills to, ib. ; languages of
India, 445 ; dawk travelling, 446 ;
villages on the way, ib ; aristocracy
of colour, 447 ; English haughti-
ness, ib. ; Indian plains, ib, ;
ruins, ib, ; wheat harvest, 448 ;
female reapers, ib. ; jampan
riding, ib. ; dustoree custom,
448, 449 ; servants, unpleasant
number of, 449 ; thirty-five re-
quired for one small family in
Simla, ib. ; cheapness of labo-ir,
450 ; English soldiers, the possi-
bility of keeping all at hil!
stations, 451 ; story-telling in
the East, ib. ; entry to Simla,
452 ; the Viceroy's children, ib ;
climate, 453 ; suitability of Simla
as a refuge of the Indian Govern-
ment from Calcutta heat, ib. ;
the question of new " Governor-
ship," 454 ; Calcutta, disadvan-
tages of, as capital, ib. ; future
capital of India, 455 ; a sunrise
scene from Simla, ib. ; a fair at
Simla, 460.

• Scinde, the Indus, 508 ;

the Indus valley a part of the
great Sahara, 509 ; sailing on
the Indus, 509, 510 ; a Persian's
prayer on shipboard, 511 ; shal-
lownessof the river, ib. ; necessity
of a safe and speedy road up the
valley, ib, ; neglect of railways
in India, 512 ; need and value of
them, ib, ; early trade between
China and Hindostan, 513 ;
Sukkur, ib. ; native fishing, ib. ;
hot wind, 514 (see India :— Over-
land Routes).

Umritsur, 470; Hindoo sa-
cred fair, or camp meeting, ib. ;
Sikh pilgrims on the way from,
ib. ; cholera stricken, 470, 472 ; a
fearful march, ib. ; nature of the
great gathering, ib ; a dust storm,
472; Anglo-Indian engineering,

620

INDEX.

ib. ; neglect of roads, 473 ; the
Grand Trunk Railway, ib. ; Urn-
ritsur, beauty of, 474 ; fruits,
foliage, &c., ib. ; its famous roses,
//'. ; the attar of roses, ib. ; Cash-
mere shawl manufacture, ib. ; cost
of, ib. ; choga manufacture, 475 ;
the bazaar, ib. ; the Sikhs,
Magyar appearance of, ib. ;
Indian and English manufactures,
476 ; ornament, Hindoo taste
with respect to, ib. ; the spiritual
capital of the Sikhs, 477 ; a Sikh
revival, 478 ; its possible con-
sequences, ib.

India, East, trunk railway of, 68.

Indian customs, (see Caste).

Ocean, the, 395, 396.

Indians of the American Plains, 75 ;
stations robbed by Cheyennes,
il>. ; a formal Indian warning to
the white men, 76 ; a half-breed
interpreter, ib. ; treaties with the,
77) 77 ; opposition of, to the
Pacific Railway, 77; the chief,
" Spotted Dog," ib. ; treatment
of squaws, 81 ; and general un-
seemliness, ib. ; coming to town
to be painted, 83 ; inferiority to
the Indians of the Eastern States,
ib. ; Utes in Denver, 83 ;
physique and colour of Utes, 83,
84 ; origin of Utes, 84 ; Poly-
nesian origin, ib. ; customs simi-
lar to those of the Maories, 84 ;
degradation of the Indian, ib. ;
rapid extermination of, 85 ; scalp-
ing practised by white volunteers,
85 ; tendency when apparently
civilised to return to barbarism,
86 ; rough-and-ready attempts by
the English to civilise, ib. ; con-
servative character of the Indian,
87 ; American treaty with, ib. ;
the Indian receding before the
English race, but victorious over
the Spaniards, 88; open attempts
to exterminate, by the Coloradan
Government, ib. ; destruction of
telegraph wires by, 94, 95 ;
gangs of Indians working by
proxy on the railway, 15 1 ;
Digger Indians, 152, I52: Red
Indian supremacy in Mexico, 196.

Indus (see India, Scinde).

Irish in America, competition with
the negro, 16 ; in New York,
displacing the New Englanders,
29-31 ; danger to America and
the world, 31 ; corruption of, in
New York, 32; generosity of,
125; Irishmen not well off in.
America, 210; Belfast names in
higher esteem than Cork ones,
ib. ; the Irish remaining in towns,
and losing their attachment to
the soil, ib. ; number of, sent to
goal in America, 210; an Irish
opinion of the thermometer, 308 ;
Irish party in office in Victoria,
315 ; appointment of Irishmen to
all police offices, ib. ; checks on
Irish immigration to the colonies,
332, 335 ; workhouse girls sent
to the Colonies, 364, 365.

JAFFA, colony founded there by New
Englanders, 44.

Jamaica, homilies on the condition
of, by Southern planters, 18.

Jamestown, 3.

Japan, its probable great future,
281, 282; the revolution effected
by the provincial councils, 566 ;
in the name of the Mikado, 567 ;
under the pretext of foreign
influence, 567, 568 ; the govern-
ment still remaining in the hands
of the revolutionary councillors,
568, 569 ; Shimadzu Saburo,
his political position, ib. ; his
book against Christianity, 569 ;
his opposition to government, ib. ;
radical tone of the government,
570 ; and acts of vandalism to-
wards religious temples and
antiquities, 570, 571 ; disestab-
lishing and pensioning of the
Daimios, 571 ; Japanese ex-
Daimios, 572; national revenue
and expenditure, ib. ; rapid
extension of post offices, foreign
civilization, 573 ; and light-
houses, 574 > great increase of
taxes, opinion of European resi-
dents that reaction will bring
back the old regime, ib. ; post-
office grievance against England,

C21

$$ 5 mineral wealth, ib. ; un-
wise refusal of England to agree
to proposed game laws, 576 ;
naval and military forces, 576,
577 ; proposed neutralization of
the Pacific, 577 ; Mikado
dynasty, 577, 578; English
influence in, 578 ; gradual
diminution in number of foreign
employes, 578 ; probable increase
in English and American in-
fluence and decline of that of
France, 579 ; native act versus
English taste, 580, 581 ; theatres,
tea houses, absence of religious
reverence, 581 ; temple of
\saksa in Tokio, 581, 582 ;
pliant disposition of Japanese,
583 ; country in war, 584 ;
knowledge more strengthening
than military preparations, 585 ;
and rights of more importance
than prestige, ib. ; liberty of the
press suppressed, 586 ; trip to
Akashi, 586-588 ; foreign in-
fluence, 588, 589; beauty of
scenery, 589, 590 ; travelling in,
perfectly safe for foreigners, ib. ;
the only land of the Joyous Life,
590.

Java, indolence of natives and
colonists owing to climate, 280 ;
pernicious system of labour ap-
plied to culture by Dutch in, 407 ;
jobbery of Dutch government,
ib. ; demoralizing effect of culture
system, 408 ; secret history of
the system, 408, 409 ; beauties of,
607, 608 ; mortality from animals
and catastrophies, 608.

Jenny Lind, the hall where she
sang on first landing in America,
29.

Jockey Club, S)dney, meeting of
(see Sydney).

Johnson, President, absurdity of his
policy, 26.

K ANDY (Ceylon), the highland king-
dom, and one of the holiest of
Buddhist towns, 405 ; dress and
appearance of the people, ib. ; the
Upper Town one great garden,
405, 40$ ; tooth of Buddha, 406 ;

the coffee district, ib. ; Govern-
ment Botanical Gardens — medi-
cinal plants, ib. ; importance of
the coffee-trade to Ceylon, ib. ;
want of capital in, ib. ; Ceylon
petitions for self-government,
409 ; small number of whites in
the country, 409, 410 ; mountain
scenery, ib. ; trees and foliage,
410.

Kansas, emancipation of women in,
&c., 58, 63; parallel lines o(
railway in, 68 ; Nebraska opinion
of Kansas, 69 ; female suffrage in
the opposite pole to Utah poly-
gamy, 106 ; evasion of the Home-
stead Act in, 169.

Kimball, Heber, Mormon, 108.

King George's Sound (see Convicts).

Kit Carson, 144.

Kurrachee (see India : — Overland
Routes).

LABOUR, (see Chinese) ; a degrada-
tion in slave countries, 6 ; labour
question in Southern United
States, 18, 19 ; in New South
Wales, 291, 292 ; in tropical
colonies, 293 ; coloured labour
in Queensland, 293, 294 ; price
of, equalized by steam, 326 ;
protection resorted to l.y Ameri-
cans as a means of keeping out
the paupers and cheap labour of
other countries, 327 ; power ot
working men in Australia, as
compared with, in the United
States, ib. ; the real grievance of
the working-classes throughout
the world, ib. ; laws by workmen
in the colonies, and in those parts
of America where they have power,
to meet the want, 321 ; opposition
of the Sydney workmen to botli
immigration and transportation,
332 ; defence of the labour laws,
332-334 ; English Factory Act
a step which diminished the
powers of production, 334 ; Know-
nothingism in America, a protest
against the exaggerations of free
trade, ib. ; the fundamental basis
of the labour question, 335 ; our
recent ridicule of the Chintie

G22

exclusiveriess, 336 ; our present
Opposition to Chinese immi-
giation, ib> ; the Chinese push-
ing to the front whenever they
have an opportunity, 336, 337 ;
the colonial labour laws not un-
like those of a trade union, 337 ;
the old relation between master
and servant dying out, ib. ; new
aspect of labour in accordance
with democratic principles, 338 ;
co-operative labour supplanting
the middle-age system, ib. ; in-
dustrial partnerships a return to
the earliest and noblest forms of
labour, ib. ; women in relation
to the labour question, 341 ;
Dutch system of, in Java, 407.

La Chine, in Canada, orginal name,
64

Lahore (see India :— Lahore).

Land tenure in Australia (see Squat-
ters, Australia (South), and
Democracy) ; land laws in the
United States, 167, 170; land
question in New Zealand, 277 ;
land tenure in India, 458, 459.

Latin Church, the, in America, 31.

Empire in America, 195 ; its

virtual downfall, ib,

Lntinization, the apparent, of the
English in America, 217.

Launceston (see Tasmania).

Lawrence, St., the, 46, 305 ;
Laurentian range of mountains, ib.

Leavenworth, 68, 69.

Locusts, the scourge of the United
States plains, 91, 92.

Long's Peak, 82, 94.

Louisiana, banana in, 20 ; probable
future of negro in, ib. ;

Lucknow (see India : — Mohamedan
Cities).

Lynch Law 5u Denver, 114; where
inaugurated, 152; vigilance com-
mittees, 159 ; great need for, in
California, in 1848, ib. ; influx of
English convicts and desperadoes
from all parts, 160 ; first at-
tempted action on the part of the
people for their own protection,
ib. ; united attempt, 161 ; trial
by lynch law, ib. ; vigilance com-
mittee formed, 162 ; its regular

organization and prompt action,
ib. ; show of resistance to police,
ib. ; but warned away, ib. ; the
trial, 163 ; and execution, ib. ;
full public account of the circum-
stances, ib. ; trial and execution
endorsed by the citizens in public
meeting, ib. ; struggle with au-
thority— the committee victorious,
164 ; sending the convicts back
to Australia, ib. ; a fearful year
(1855), ib. ; resolute action of the
people, 165, 166 ; end of the
work, ib. ; necessity for the
action, 1 66 ; somewhat different
action in Melbourne for the same
purpose, ib. ; public spirit of the
people, 167 ; descendants of the
justice-loving Germans, ib. ; two
memorable Lynch -law trees, 170;
vigilance committees in Denver,
Leavenworth, &c., 170, 171.

MAINE LIQUOR LAW, likelihood
of being the first cause of th«
reaction against the now trium-
phant Radicals, 203 ; state right
to regulate liquor traffic, 203,
204.

Maize, the staple of Michigan and
United States, 57, 58.

Malay peninsula, proposed annex-
tion of, 607, 608.

Malays (see Maori).

Malthusianism rejected in America,
89.

Maori (see Race) : — comparison of,
with Red Indians and Poly-
nesians, 84 ; great decrease, 85 ;
Question of Maories being natives
of the New Zealand soil, 245 ;
legend of their flight to New
Zealand, ib. ; Polynesian names
in their language, 246 ; tradi-
tional account of the cradle of
race, ib. ; resemblance between,
and the Red Indians of America,
247, 248 ; similarity of religious
rites and social customs of, 248 ;
the Malay race in the Pacific,
ib. ; the most widely scattered of
all the nations of the world
before the English, 249 ; the
Maories, Malays, ib. ; Mala]

023

breach of a law of nature in
going to New Zealand, ib. ;
paying the penalty in extinction,
ib.\ Parewanui Pah, 250; a
Maori song, ib. ; meeting of the
tribes to discuss with the white
man a great question of the right
to territory, 251 ; curious idea of
the Maories as to the title of
land, ib. ; a summons to the
council, 252 ; vigorous speeches
of the chiefs, 252, 253 ; the
representative of the Queen
(Dr. Featherston) communicating
with the chiefs, 254 ; adjourn-
ment for luncheon, ib. ; the
Maori belles, 255 ; views of the
chiefs with respect to Dr.
Featherston's decision, ib. ; busi-
ness of the Council resumed, ib. ;
oratorical abuse, 256 ; breaking-
no of the Council, 257 ; its
singular resemblance to the
Greek Council as described by
Homer, ib. ; alarming news of
guns being sent for, 258 ;
another general meeting of the
tribes, ib. ; Maori names, ib. ;
the Queen's flag pulled down,
ib. ; Dr. Featherston's refusal to
attend any debate till the flag
is re-hoisted, ib. ; an interesting
voyage in an English ship k/r
cannibal purposes, 259 ; the
captain's compensation for the
use of his ship, ib. ; Maori dance
song, ib. ; sketching the Maories,
260 ; native tombs, ib. ; apology
for the pulling down of the flag,
261 ; the deed of land sale, ib. ;
eternal friendship between the
tribes, ib. ; the money sent for by
Dr. Featherston, ib. ; misgivings
arid grief of the Maories, ib. ;
their song of lamentation, ib. ;
the money paid. 262 ; grand cele-
bration, 262-264 ; effect of a
war-dance on Lord Durham's
settlers (in 1837), 264 ; specimens
of native oratory — noble speech
of the chief Ilunia, 264, 266 ; a
long ramble in New Zealand, 267 ;
Maori Christianity, its hollow-
Bess, 26$ ; baptized out of the

Church, ib. ; their Church of
Englandism a failure, ib. ; in
spite of the earnestness and devo-
tion of missionaries, ib. ; the great
outbreak, ib. ; deserting the mis-
sion-station for the bush, ib. ; a
question— pork, beef, or man for
food, 269 ; the Maori reply, ib. ;
rapid spread of Christianity
among, when first presented, il\ ;
the native religion a vague Poly-
theism, ib. ; no caste among the
Maories, 270 ; reverence for
high-born women, ib. ; influence
of women, ib. ; delicacy of the
men towards, ib. ; making it
possible for an honest English-
man to respect or love an honest
Maori, 271 ; Maori superiority to
other native races in savage lands,
271, 272 ; noble Maori trait, of
"proclaiming" a war district,
end never touching an enemy,
however defenceless, when found
elsewhere, 272 ; royal ideas of
money, ib. ; Maori ability in war,
ib. ; their fondness for horses and
skill as riders, 273 ; their love
for the sea, and possession of
vessels, ib. ; good deep-sea fisher-
men, ib. ; and draught-players,
ib. ; shrewd and thrifty, devoted
friends and brave men, ib. ; the
English the winning race in the
struggle with Maories, 275, 276 ;
cannibalism of, caused by lack of
animal food, 276, 277 ; half-
breeds ; viciousness of unmarried
Maori women, 278 ; their saying,
" We are gone like the moa," ib. j
customs of, 422.

Massachusetts, progress of, 43.

Maximilian, received in Mexico by
white men, «nd conquered by
half-breeds, 196.

Mayflower, and the Pilgrim Fathers,
24; 29.

Mean whites, formerly the rulers of
America, leaders of the rebellion.
6 ; controlling power of the
South, 241 ; dependent on Slavery,

25-

Melbourne (see Victoria), method of
dealing with corrupt rulers, 166 j

621

founding of, ill 1835; 297 ; valid
progress, ib. ; and trading energy,
298, architecture, 299 ; Christmas
treat at, 307 ; learned and dis-
tinguished men at, 3175 the
Attorney-General, Mr. Higgin-
botham, ib. ; a Government
clerk's horror of the low pedi-
gree of three ministers of state,
ib. ; Colonial Parliament on its
dignity, committal of a reporter,
318; his triumph, ib. ; early
competition of Melbourne and
Geelong, 342 ; voyage from Mel-
bourne to Hokitika, ib. ; the great
gold mania in 1848, ib. ; ob-
jections to its being the capital
of a confederated Australia, 357.

Mexican saddle, peculiarity of, 180.

Mexico, coasting to, 194 ; Cape St.
Lucas, ib. ; turtle and crocodile,
ib. ; French army of occupation,
195 ; Acapulco, ib. ; anniversary
of Marshall Bazaine's order direct-
ing the execution of all Mexicans
found with arms, ib. ; Spanish
Mexica becoming Red Indian,
196 ; resolution of the United
States that Mexico shall not be-
come a monarchy, 197 ; the large
Catholic population it would give
in case of annexation to the Ame-
rican Union, ib. ; beauty of the
Mexican Pacific coast, 198.

Michigan, students of university,
drawn from all States, 37 ; moral
influence of New England teach-
ers in, 43 ; University of, 57 ;
Michigan men and maize, ib. ;
democracy of the University, 58 ;
Government of, 59 ; progress of
the Michigan teaching system,
ib. ; supported by the taxpayers
of the State, ib. ; jocose reports
of superintendents of schools,
60 ; loyally, 61 ; students sent to
the war, ib. ; system of elective
studies, ib. ; dislike to competitive
honours, ib. ; practical character
of, 62 ; exclusion of women from
the university, 63 ; the coasts of
Michigan great lakes, 67.

M ilwaukee, N .rwegian character of,
219.

Miscegenation, Frerich adoption of,
English dislike to, 85 ; amongst
Maori, 278.

Mission Dolores, near San Fran-
cisco, once a Jesuit Mission-house,
now partly a blanket factory and
partly a church, 172, 173.

Mississippi, probable future of negro
in, 20.

Missouri, law for the punishment of
drunkards, &c., 237.

Mohamedans (see India : — Poonah,
and India : — Mohamedan Cities).

Mohurrum (see India : — Poonah).

Monroe Doctrine, dignified action
of America thereon, 198.

Monroe, Fort, 3 ; negroes at, ib. ;
their tomb at, 13.

Montreal (see Canada), 50.

Mormons (see Brigham Young,
Danites, Nauvoo, newspaper,
Stenhouse, Utah, Western Edi-
tors), a camp on the way to Utah,
97 ; Coalville, the Mormon
Newcastle, 98 ; first sight of the
Promised Land, ib. ; Jordan river,
ib. ', one great field of corn and
wheat, 98 ; a lady reading to her
daughters a defence of polygamy,
99; first night in Utah, 100 ;
arms at hand, ib. ; interest of the
Church paramount, 102 ; the
Mormon constitution, ib. ; pen-
alty for adultery, 103 ; kind treat-
ment by the Mormons, 104 ; the
representative of Utah in Con-
gress a Monogamist, ib. ; anecdote
of, 105 ; a Mormon theatre, ib. ;
the women, ib. ; unconscious
melancholy of, ib. ; their perfect
freedom, and opportunity of es-
caping if they wished to do so,
ib. ; defence of polygamy, 106 ;
Utah polygamy and Kansas female
suffrage the opposite poles to each
other, ib. ; misrepresentation of,
107 ; theatre and church clothes,
108 ; industry, no, Ili-n6;
natural poorness of the country,
116; Mormon faith, 118; their
belief in approaching danger
from United States' interference,
ib. ; detested by New England
and defended by the South, 1 19 j

INDEX.

625

at the mercy of the Federal
Congress, 119, 120; law not
enforced against, ib. ; dispersion
of, by advance of railways, 121 ;
democratic character of Mor-
monisin, 122 ; vitality of Mor-
monism, 123; danger toil from
the probable discovery of gold in
Utah, 124 ; impossibility of its sur-
viving a great immigration, ib. ;
they would in that case again
make their way to new territory,
ib. ; names, 153, 154.
Moultan (see India : — Native States).

NAMES (cuiious) of place and people
in United States, 152, 154.

Nauvoo, the city of Joe Smith,
220 ; first settlers of, forgotten
there, ib.

Nebraska, 69.

Negroes, gallantry of, II ; burial-
place of 5000 killed in battle, ib. ;
our English notions of, near the
truth, 14 ; love of dress, ib. ; plan-
ter's view of freedom of, ib. ; re-
ported negro view of marriage,
ib. ; need of soap, 15 ; importance
of the "negro question," ib. ;
fallacious evidence against ne-
groes, ib. ; asking for land, 16 ;
their position as slaves, ib. ; and
as free men, 17 ; testimony of
General Grant to their excellence
as soldiers, ib. ; a negro school,
ib. ; negro ability, ib. ; supersti-
tion, ib. ; alternative of ruling
them by their own votes or by
force, 20; as against northern
capitalists in Louisiana, Missis-
sippi, Florida, and South Carolina,
and white labourers in other staies,
20 ; reading and writing basis of
uffrage absurd, 21 ; co-operative
labour, 21 (see Davis) ; progress
of, 22 ; the ballot for, in the
Southern States, 25 ; civiliza-
bility of, 87.

Nepaulese, the (see India : — Native
States).

Nevada, its silver mines, 142 ;
rectification of frontier, 146.

New Englanders, going westward,
29 ; in North or West the real

Americans, 34 ; their affection fot
Harvard College, 40 ; earnest God-
fearing principles, 43 ; influence
of, on the nation, tb. ; their lov-
able character, 45 ; views as to
treatment of Indians, 85, 86 ; dis-
like to Mormonism, 119; sup-
pressed by rowdyism, 170; wide-
spread belief of, that the taint of
alcoholic poison is hereditary,
203, 204.

New England States, their superi-
ority to the States of the South, 9
(see Southern States, Western
States, and Mayflower) ; colleges
of, 37 ; population of, 43 ; debt
of the Union to New England,
44 ; heroism of New England,
ib. ; poverty of the soil, ib. ;
enterprise, &c., 45.

New South Wales, (ice Rival Colo-
nies; Squatters) ; coal, &c., future
prospects, 281, 294, 295 ; convict
blood in, 289 ; terrible depression
of trade in, at present, 291, causes
of, 292 ; reptiles in, 296.

New York, climate of, 28 ; strength
of the Narrows, ib. ; un-English
character, ib. ; sea spirit and busy
life, ib. ; race, Southern, ib. ; no-
thing of the Dutch foundation
remaining, 29; intensely Irish, 30,
31 ; low tone of local legislature,
32 ; denationalization of, ib. ; neg-
lect of native colleges and prefer-
ence for foreign ones, ib. ; gigantic
fortunes in, 33 ; profligacy, petro-
leum, shoddy, and unrest, ib. ;
equality and affected dislike of
democracy, 34 ; scenery of, ib. ;
cause of prosperity, 190 ; demo-
cracy of, 213.

New Zealand (see Otago ; Canter-
bury ; Rival Colonies ; Thomp-
son ; Wellington ; Hokitika ; and
Maori) : — University graduates
and officers of the British army
at the diggings, 238, 239 -, beauty
and peculiarity of New Zealand
scenery, 240 ; the Taramakao,
ib. ; the Snowy Range, ib. ;
Mount Rolleston, 241 ; Lake
Misery, ib. ; plant peculiar to the
banks of, ib. ; the Waimnkiriri
2 S

626

INDEX.

Valley, ib. ; New Zealand pro-
vinces, ib. ; rivalry of, ib. ; cost
of the provincial system and
Maori wars, 242 ; consequences
of the division into two islands,
243 ; rivalry of the great towns,
ib. ; Karaka trees, the New Zea-
land sacred trees, 250 ; New
Zealand scenery, 267 ; supplant-
ing of native plants and animals
of, by English, 274 ; explanation,
274, 275 ; the supremacy of the
English over the Maori fly, 275 ;
suitability of soil and climate for
English productions, men, seeds
and insects, ib. ; natural extinc-
tion of native species, 276 ; liberal
action of British government with
respect to land, 277 ; its chance
of being the future England of
the Pacific, 279, 280 ; climate,
indolence of Colonists, 280.

Newspapers : — New Orleans Tri-
bune (negro paper ), 22 ; British
Columbian, 51 ; the Salt Lake
Telegraph, 102 ; the Union Vedette
(Utah), 107; contents of the
Vedette, 108, 109 ; the great
inferiority of, to the Mormon
papers, the Telegraph and Deseret
News, 109-112 ; the Denver
Gazette, &c., 112-114; the Cali-
fornia Alta, and journalism under
difficulties, 115, 141 ; Nevada
Union Gazette, 140 ; the San
Francisco Bulletin, 165 ; Sydney
Morning Herald, agents of, in-
tercepting the mail boat, 288 ;
the Melbourne Argus, 301 ; the
Riverina Herald, 305 ; advertise-
ments, paragraphs, &c. of, 305-
307 ; commital of member of the
staff of the Melbourne Argus,
318; newspapers in India, 430;
native satire of the English in,
ib. ; the Umritsur Commercial
Advertiser, ib. ; the Dacca Pro-
kash, 465 ; Indian newspapers,
480, 481 ; the Punjaub Gazette,
481 ; Nichi Niehi Shimbun, 574,
575 > ffochi Shimbun ; Akebona
Shimbun, 585 ; North China
Herald, 591, 592, 599.

Niagara and Chaudiere, 56.

Nitro-glycerine, dread of, in Cali-
fornia, 178, 179.

Norfolk, second city in Virginia,
physique and citizens, 4.

North (United States), superiority
of its arms during the war, 23.

North and South in United States,
the unvarying success of the
former in any trial of strength,
66, 67.

Norwegian population in Wiscon-
sin, 219 ; Milwaukee a Nor-
wegian town, ib. ; a Canadian
plan for a Norwegian colony on
Lake Huron, 220.

OHIO, beauty of scenery and wealth
of soil, 57 ; future importance of,
66.

Omaha, 68, 69.

Omphalism, or government from
continental centres, (see Centre).

Otago (New Zealand), Presbyterian
settlement, 242.

Ottawa, capital of the New Cana-
dian Dominion, 55 ; its Parlia-
ment house, 56 ; the Chaudiere
Falls, ib. ; cholera at, 57.

Overland Routes (see India : — Over-
land Routes).

PACIFIC, the, voyage across, from
Panama to New Zealand, 228 ;
from Pitcairn Island, 231 ;
climate of, 280 ; unfavourable to
the progress of New Zealand,
ib. ; effect of like causes else-
where, ib. ; coal in the, ib. ;
Japan, Vancouver Island, and
New Zealand, likely to rise to
manufacturing greatness, 281 ;
Christmas-day on, 285.

Pacific Railroad, growing at the
rate of two miles a day at one
end and one mile at the other,
64 ; probable completion of it in
1870, ib.; induct ments to pro-
ceed quickly with the work, ib. ;
rapid and steady progress west-
ward, 65 ; armed construction
trains, ib. ; the great objects of
the undertaking, 66 ; Indian
opposition to the, 77.

INDEX.

C!:7

Fakeha, Maori name for English
race (see Maori).

Panama, character of, 227 > animals
and birds of, ib. ; scene at a rail-
way station, ib. ; prospects of
Panama, 228 ; departure from,
for Wellington, New Zealand, ib.

1'aper money in the Western States
of America, 141, 142.

Parewanui Pah (see Maori)-

Parsees (see India: — Bombay).

Party organization, despotism of,
in America, 204 ; secret of party
power, 205.

Pawnees, So.

Pennsylvania, future importance of,
66.

Perim (see Dependencies).

Petersburg, America, as left by the
war, 8, 9 ; defences of, 10.

Pigs, thriving state in New Zealand,
276.

Pike's Peak, 79, 82.

Pioneer, a great, 80.

.Pioneering in America, 69 ; on the
Plains, 75.

Pitcairn Island, the banana-tree
there, 37 ; arrival at, 229 ;
visited by the people, ib. ; " How
do you do, captain ? How's Vic-
toria ? " ib. ; descendants of the
Bounty mutineers, ib. ; wish to
submit to the captain a case for
arbitration, ib. ; the case stated
for advice, ib. ; its curious legal
bearing, 230 ; a temporary com-
mercial treaty with the islanders,
ib. ; inquiry for English period-
icals, ib. ; brandy as medicine,
ib. ; the Islanders strict tetotallers,
ib. ; standing out from the bay,
231.

Placerville, in California, fire at ;
now deserted by diggers, 151 ;
luxurious feeding, 154, 155;
cheap fruit, 155 ; whisky shops,
156.

Plains, the, of North America,
vegetation, 73 ; absence of trees,
ib. ; out on, 74; a " squar'
meal," ib. ; weird scene, 75 ;
great distance of forts from each
other, 76 ; sitting revolver in
hand, 77 ; a million companions

in the loneliness, 78 ; dust storms
78, 79 ; profuseness of flowers,
81, 82 ; beauty and vastness of,
89 ; resemblance to the Tartar
Plains, ib. ; vast extent, 90 ; two
curses on the land — siccity, 90,
91 ; and locusts, 91, 92 ; feeding
ground for large flocks, 92.
Plain tain,^i9.

Planter view of negro freedom, 14 ;
effect of slavery on both master
and slave, 1 8 ; planters leaving
the South, 25.

Plutocracy in Australia, 317 (see
Squatter).

Point de Galle (see Ceylon).

Polygamy, first experience of, 97 ;
amongst Mormons, 105, 106 ; de-
termination of the United States
government to suppress it, 118;
opposition of New Englanders to,
118, 119, 124; legal aspect of
question, 120, 121 ; moral aspect
121-124; in India, 466; poly-
andry, 467 ; polygyny 467-469.

Polynesians, comparison of, with
Red Indians and Maories, 84 ;
Malay origin of, 251-255 (see Race
and Maori) ; rapid spread of
Christianity among, 275 ; the
Maori religion common to all
Polynesians, ib. ; a vague Poly-
theism in the songs, seeming to
approach Pantheism, ib. \ differ-
ence between the Maories and
other Polynesians, 2^6.

Poonah (see India : — Poonah).

Potomac, 27.

Prairie clogs, for food, 76 ; on the
Plains, 77.

Protection, why advocated in United
States, 31 ; to naiive industry in
the colonies, 323 ; the squaiters
alone in favour of free trade, ib. \
defence of protection by the
diggers, 324 ; its self-denying
character, ib. ; defended on
different grounds in Australia and
America, 325 ; grandeur of the
willingness to sacrifice private
interest that a nation may be
built up, 326 , protection to a
great degree a revolt against
steam, ib. ; American defence of,

2 S 2

62S

INDEX.

ss a necessity toayour.g nation,
327 ; and as a security against
the pauper labour of Europe, ib. ;
"No American without protec-
tion," 328 ; eagerness for, in
Victoria, 329 ; American ad-
mission of the economical argu-
ment, but assertion that political
objections overweigh it, 330 ;
protection not the doctrine of a
clique but a nation, ib.

Protestantism (see Religion).

Pyramids, the, 558.

QUEBEC, terrace at, 46 ; change of
scene from the States, ib. ; cli-
mate of Quebec, 49 ; Northern
Lights, ib.

Queensland (see Rival Colonies and
Squatters) ; question of the cul-
tivation of a tropical country not
yet settled, 293 ; little hope of
the coloured races being received
on equal terms of citizenship, 294 ;
physical condition of the colonists
on the Downs and in Brisbane,
298 ; population of (from 1860 to
1866), 335.

Quicksilver, or cinnabar mines of
New Almaden, 179, 180.

RACE, (see English Race) ; mis-
cegenation, 85 ; English failure
to civilize native races, 86, 87 ;
war of, in America, 29-32 ,
217 ; in New Zealand, 218 ; in
Mexico, 2 1 8, 219 ; disappear-
ance of physical type, ib. ;
gradual destruction of races, the
bearing of, on religion, 220; prob-
able opposition of the Victorians
to the Queensland colonists avail-
ing themselves of the labour of
the dark-skinned races, 293 j un-
fairness of the planters to the
dark-skins, 294 ; danger of
peonage, ib. ; conflict of cheaper
witli dearer races, 564.

Radicals of the United States, 199.

Radical Unitarians (see Religion).

Rail and river, the Kansas and
Platte Pacific routes, 67 ; in-
fluence of railways on the
prosperity of towns, 68 ; railways

in America preceding population,
ib. ; converging lines and parallel
lines, 68, 7 1 ; neglect of railways
in India, 512; railway up Bore
Ghaut, 529, 530.

Ranchmen, cooks, and ostlers, 132 ;
their roughness, ib. ; dislike to
" biled shirts," 133.

Red Indians (see Indians).

Religion, spread of Catholicism and
decline of Protestantism in the
United States, 31 ; Catholicism in
Upper Canada, 50 ; spiritualism
in the United States, 113; Mora on-
ism, 118-124; Episcopalianism
versus Catholicism as the future
predominant religion in the
United States, 178 ; Catholicism
not ' ' fashionable " in United
States, ib. ; important influence
•which destruction of races by the
English has on religion, 220, 221 ;
religion in San Francisco,
Chicago, and United States, 221 ;
spread of Radical Unitarians,
221, 222 ; spiritualism in United
States, ib. ; influence of Germans
on Americans, 222, 223 ; advance
of Episcopalian churches, 223 ;
Conservatism of creeds in Aus-
tralia, 320 ; Victorian colonists
mostly belong to the principal
English churches, ib. ; few
American sects existing in Vic-
toria, ib. ; Australian church de-
nominations, 383 ; Buddhism and
missionary work in Ceylon, 404 ;
Buddhism in Kandy, 406; temples
and Buddhism in Benares, 419-
422 ; Hindoo churches, English
and native, 430, 431 ; church of
Hindoo deists, 431 ; sacred fairs
of India at Hurdwar and other
places, 470-471*. ; Durbar temple
at Umritsur, 477 ; Sikh creeds,
ib. ; Sikh revival, 478 ; Moham-
edan sects, 493 ; Mohamedan
feast of Mohurrum at Kurrachee,
515, 516; Parsees, 526, 527;
destruction of Buddhist monu-
ments in Japan, 570, 571 ;
Buddhism and Shintooism in Japan,
571 ; religous fair at the temple of
Asaksa, 581, 582; tale of Buddhist

629

idols, 582, '83 ; missionaries in
China, 592, 593.

Representation in the Northern and
Southern States, 21.

Reptiles, in New South Wales,
296 ; Tasmania, 354 ; a snake
story, ib.

Republican party, status of, in the
United States, 199 ; complete
organization and great power of,
207.

Rhode Island, smallness of territory
and population, 43.

Richmond, 8 ; defences of, 10 ; fu-
ture prospects of, 12 ; Washing-
ton's statue in, ib. ; Hollywood
Cemetery, 13.

Riley Fort, the centre of the
United States, 70, 71 ; and future
seat of government, 72, 73.

Rival colonies and towns — Aus-
tralia and New Zealand, 285 ;
New Zealand hitherto mainly
aristocratic, New South Wales
and Victoria democratic, 286 ;
separation of New Zealand and
Australia by a wide and stormy
ocean, ib. ; New Zealand pre-
senting to Australia a rugged
coast, while her ports and bays
are turned towards America and
Polynesia, 287 ; difference of
races, conditions and climate, ib. ;
energy of the Australians as
compared with the supineness of
the New Zealanders, 288 ; dif-
ferent appearance of the people
in the two colonies, 289 ; New
South Wales, Queensland, Vic-
toria, 291 ; probable wide poli-
tical differences in the future,
292 ; Sydney and Melbourne,
298 ; rivalry of, 299 ; climate,
308 ; the question of confedera-
tion of the Pacific colonies, 356 ;
willingness of the colonies for
free-trade with each other, ib. ;
postal and customs union, ib. ;
difficulties in the way of con-
federation, 357 ; choice of future
capital, ib. ; desirability of select-
ing some obscure village and not
«. great town, tb. ; the bearing of
confederation on imperial in-

terests, ^58 ; and on colonial ones,
ib. ; our duty in case it should lead
to independence, ib.

Riverina, the (see Victoria and
Newspapers).

Rockwell, Porter, chief of the
Danites, 125 ; terror of, caused
by his murderous career, 125,
126 ; several persons bearing this
name, 126 ; murders assigned to,
126-129 > physiognomy, 129 ;
death of Captain Gunnison, of
the Federal Engineers, near
Rockwell's house, 131.

Rocky Mountains, 64 ; sublime
view of, from Denver, 82 ; Black
Mountains, 93 ; the Wind River
Chain, &c. ib. ; dreaded alkali
dust of the desert, 94 ; a fine
scene, 95 ; the Elk Mountains,
96 ; game, &c., ib. ; Rocky
Mountain plateau, ib. ; solitude
of, ib ; sudden arrival by night at
a Mormon camp, 97 ; a Mormon
welcome, ib. ; Echo Canon, ib.

Rowdyism in the West, put dowu
by the God-fearing New Eng-
landers, 170.

Russia (see India : — Russian ap-
proach to) and England will firsf
come face to face on the A moor,
191, 192.

SACRAMENTO, 158; the Sacra-
mento river, ib.
Sage brush (Artemisia) in Utah, 94,

95. 96.

Sage hens, 96.

Saguenay, scenery and life on the,
49-

Salt Lake, old and high terraces of,
129, 130; decline and rise of
lake, 130.

San Francisco and Chicago, the
cosmopolitanism or", compared,
221.

San Francisco (see Lynch Law), its
future connexion with Europe by
means of the Pacific Railway, 66,
67 ; early building difficulties,
*73» r745 original name Yerba
Buena, 175; nitro - glycerine
explosions in, 178, 179; its
claim to be one of the chief

c:w

INDEX.

statioi.s of the Ango-Saxon high-
way round the world, 189 ;
remarks on its probable future,
190-192.

San Jose, the Garden City, 179.

Sandhurst, 301 ; aspect and charac-
ter of the town, 302 ; the " Go-
vernment Reserve," ib. ; Chinese
clerks and diggers, ib ; unjust
treatment of, 303.

Sandridge (see Victorian Ports).

Saxon, wandering discontent of, 157.

Saxon and Latin races in America
sharp conflict between, 176.

Scinde (see India).

Scotch, the, as immigrants, 365,
366 (see also India, Bombay).

Servants, in India, 448-450.

Shimadzu Saburo, the leading con-
servative of Japan, 568, 569.

Sierro Madre, as seen from Denver,
82.

Sierra Nevada, 145 ; its grim aspect,
ib. ; and obstacles to travelling
westward, 145, 146, 147.

Sikhs (see India : — Umritsur).

Silver mines of Nevada, 142, 143.

Simla (see India).

Singapore, future of, 606.

Slavery, influence of, on estimation
of labour, 6 ; in depraving Vir-
ginia, 9 ; effects of, 16, 17, 18 ;
action of thinkers in United
States, 41 ; fight for freedom, by
them, 41, 42 ; a slave, 45 ; not
the direct cause of the war of Se-
cession, 122; in connection with
the naturalization of languages,
539 j market at Cairo, 558.

South Australia (see Australia).

Southern States, planters of, 6 ;
society of, disorganized, 15;
injurious effect on, of the banana
tree growing wild, and offering
food without labour, 19, 20; dis-
union among Seceding States,
23 ; rights of, 24 ; hatred to the
New England States, 24, 26.

Spanish language, naturalization of,
in America, 538.

Sphinx, the, 558.

Spiritualism (see Religion).

Squatters, the, tenants of the Crown
land in Queensland, 292 ; struggle

in Victoria between, and the
agricultural democracy, ib. ; the
monopolization of land discour-
aged by the democracy, 299 ;
the Squatter Aristocracy, 309 ;
meaning of the term "colonial con-
servative " ib. ; term " squatter "
denned, 310 ; the squatter the
nabob of Sydney and Melbourne,
ib. ; squatter complaints, ib. ;
what the townsmen think of, ib. ;
evils of the squatter system, 311 ;
almost entire appropriation of the
lands in Victoria, ib. ; colonial
Democracy, perception by, of the
dangers of the land monopoly,
ib. ; popular movement for the
nationalization of land, ib. ;
Radical legislation against land
monopoly, 312; the squatter
denunciation of, ib. ; his right to
impound cattle, ib.; interest of
Victoria in putting down the
monopoly, 313.

Stenhouse, Elder, the Mormon,
100 ; his answer to the question,
' ' Has Brigham's election ever
been opposed?" 101 ; views as
to Brigham Young's place in
Utah, 102 ; becomes an opponent
of the Mormons, ib. ; postmaster,
107 ; denounced by the Vedette
newspaper, ib. ; editor of the
Telegraph, 108 ; dislike to jokes,
ib. ; Artemus Ward's joke to, ib. ;
Stenhouse's opinion of Mormon
and Welsh coal, 117 ; his rebuke
of the Author, 118.

Suffrage, negro, reading and writing
basis for, 21.

Sukkur (see India: — Scinde).

Sunflowers in the United States'
plains, 90.

Sunrise, fire, 233.

Sunsets, red, 231.

Sydney, arrival off the " Heads,"
"288 ; Sydney Cove, ib. ; appearance
of the town, ib. ; the Midsummer
Meeting of the Sydney Jockey
Club on New Year's Day, ib. ;
appearance of the ladies on the
Grand Stand, 289 ; the young
people, ib. ; no trace of convict
blood in the faces on the race-

IXDKX.

631

course, tb. ; the last of the bush
rangers, 290 ; English fruits,
foliage, &c., ib. ; heat, succeeded
by a gale, ib. ; wealth in coal,
295 ; the City of Pleasure, 296 ;
surpassed in energy by Melbourne,
298, 299 ; opposition of the
operative classes of, to immigra-
tion and transportation, 332 ;
University of, 382.

TAJ MAHAL (see India : — Mohame-

dan Cities).

Tasmania (see Convicts), coal of,
281 ; pleasant climate of, 345 ;
English scenery, ib. ; and homes,
&c., ib.; Maria Van Diemen's
Land, ib. ; the Tamar river, ib. ;
Launceston, ib. ; southward to
Hobarton, ib. ; deserted and dis-
heartening state of the country,
346 ; bountifulness of nature, ib. ;
great number of naturalized fruits,
&c., ib. ; the Ireland of the South,
ib. ; the almost abandoned harbour
of Hobarton, ib. ; blight of the
convict settlement, ib. ; total ex-
tirpation of the aborigines, 349 ;
slight increase of population in
the colony, ib. ; iron and coal
abundant, but seldom worked,
350 ; consumption of spirits in,
ib. ; lotus-eating, ib. ; the land
not yet free from traces of convict
blood, ib. ; fearful character of
convict punishment, ib. ; testi-
mony of a Catholic bishop respect-
ing* 35 l 5 deeds of the Pierce-
Greenhill party, ib. ; Mr. Frost at
Port Arthur, ib. ; the convict
system as viewed in the colony,
ib. ; "Tasmania:! bolters," ib. ;
objections to convicts entering
the free colonies, 352 ; advan-
tages reaped by the colonists from
convict labour, ib. ; the Australian
colonies planted as convict settle-
ments, ib. , threats of the Vic-
torians (and in old times the Vir-
ginians), to retaliate for the ship-
ment to them of convicts, ib. ;
Tasmanian society, 353 ; and
government, ib. ; working of the

baiiot, tb. ; a ride to see the natu-
ralized salmon, ib. ; the salmon
madness, 354 ; causing the destruc-
tion of all indigenous birds, ib. ;
and has introduced the British
wasp in the ova, ib. ; reptiles, ib. ;
moonlight in Tasmania, 354, 355.

Thomson, William, the Maori king-
maker, 272 ; his high character,
277 ; true patriotism, ib. ; insulted
whenever he entered an English
town, 277, 278 ; his death, 278.

Thugs, New Zealand, 237, 238.

Teetotallers (see Pitcairn Island).

Telegraph, the, in. the American
desert, 94.

Territories, the, their capabilities,

94-

Toronto (see Canada).

Towns, natural tendency of popula-
tion toward large cities, 295 ; es-
pecially remarkable in Australia,
296 ; predominant influence of in
Australian parliament, 314.

Transportation (see Convicts).

UMRITSUR (see India).

"Uncle Sam's" desire to spread,
197.

Untied States (see America).

Utah (see Mormons), industry of
Mormons in cultivation of, 116;
Mineral riches, 116, 117; first
occupation of, 120; annexed to
the Union, ib. ; theories of annex-
ation, ib. ; approach of the Paci-
fic Railway, 121 ; intended to
put down Mormonism, ib. ; the
Mormons will not defend their
country, but retreat and pioneer
the way for further English
settlements, ib. ; the justice or
injustice of interference, 123,
124.

Utes (see Indians).

VAN DIEMAN'S Land (see Tasma
nia).

Vancouver Island, coal of, future
prospects, 281.

Victoria (see Rival Colonies ; Sand-
hurst ; Squatters), the smallest of
our Southern colonies except Tas-
mania, 297 ; and the wealthiest,

632

INDEX.

ib. ; settlement (in 1835) on the
sight where Melbourne now
stands, ib. ; population of Mel-
bourne, ib. ; buildings, railroad,
income, and debt of Victoria, ib. ;
talent and energy brought by the
rush for gold, ib. ; public spirit
of the people, ib. ; more English,
not more American, than the
people of New South Wales, 298 ;
railways in, 298 ; trade of ; de-
clining gold yield ; effect of the
gold discoveries, 299 ; discour-
agement, by the Democrats, of
the monopolization of land, ib. ;
population of, now stationary,
ib. ; admirable system of static-
tics, ib. ; statistical history of,
300 ; three samples of, ib. ; from
Melbourne to Kyneton, ib. ; har-
vest work in Victoria, 301 ; the
"Thistle Prevention Act," ib. ;
agricultural villages, ib. ; the
towns of Castletnaine and Sand-
hurst, ib. ; prairie fires, 304 ; the
Murray river, 305 ; its insignifi-
cance as a river, ib. ; but impor-
tance to commerce, ib. ; the
" Riverina," ib. ; territory in-
cluded in it, ib. ; nature of pro-
ductions as shown by the news-
papers, 306, 307 ; strange names
of stations in, 307; seasons and
climate, 307, 308 ; plutocracy in,
308 ; free Secular education, 315 ;
Upper House of, going into com-
mittee on its own constitution,
ib. ; probability of its disappear-
ance, ib. ; class animosity in,
317, 318; education in, 319,
330 ; colonists mostly belong to
the leading English Churches,
320 ; protection to industry in,
323-33o; navy supported by,
386.

Victorian Ports, Williamstown,
Sandridge, and Geelong, 342 ;
early prospects and present ruinous
state of Geelong, ib. ; ridicule of,
at Melbourne, ib. ; fine country
round Geelong, 343 ; wheat and
vines of, ib. ; Ballarat, ib. ; min-
ing districts around, 344 ; names
of places at the mines, a chrono-

logical guide td dale of settle-
ment, ib. ; climatic changes, ib.

Vigilance committees in Western
America (see Lynch Law) ; San
Francisco and the Sandwich Is-
lands, 170.

Virginia City, arrival at, 137 ; an
unsatisfactory governor, 138 ;
dancing-rooms, 139; substitution
for ladies, ib. ; peculiarities of
climate, 140 ; whisky shops, ib, •
Artemus Ward's opinion of, ib.

Virginia, approach to, 3 ; opinions
in, respecting the war, 5 ; rivers
and mineral wealth of, 9 ; in pro-
duction inferior to poorer states,
ib. ; condition of country deteri-
orated and undeveloped ; bad
roads, 9 ; decay due to slavery,
ib. ; and to gambling, 12 ; com-
petition of white and black la-
bour in, 20.

WAR OF SECESSION, old spirit
still maintained in Virginia, 5 ;
"mean whites" leaders of the
rebellion, 6.

Washington, first view of, and its
capitol, 27.

Washoe, in Nevada; its reputation,
138-

Wellington, fruit and flowers of
232 ; cattle branding with an
old college friend, ib.

West Honduras, 216.

West (America), future capital of,
68 ; empire setting towards the,
7!-73; plains of the, 73; men
and women of, their dignity,
&c., 132 ; travellers, cooks,
ostlers, and drivers of, 132, 134;
power of sheriff in, 167 ; quali-
fications for a sheriff, 1 68.

Western States (of America) grow-
ing more English, while the At-
lantic cities are falling into the
hands of the Irish, 30, 31 ; Wes-
tern perception of the dangers
from Irish preponderance on the
Atlantic seaboard, 31 ; wideness
of Western thought, ib. ; advan-
tages of the Western over the
Eastern States, 72 ; Western
objection to greenbacks,

INDEX.

CH3

agreement to accept forged notes
if well done, il>. ; fancy for classi-
cal and strange names, 153, 154 ;
honesty, 177, 178.

Western editors, 107 ; Connor, a
Fenian editor of the Union Vedette,
ib. ; his denunciation of Mormon-
ism, ib. ; an editor's room in Den-
ver, 115; influence of Connor,
107 ; wasp-like pertinacity of the
Vedette, 117; injury done by it
to liberty of thought throughout
the world, ib. ; editors in America
as a rule foreigners, and mostly
Irishmen, 140 ; editorial inquiry
for ' ' Tennyson and Thomas T.

- Carlyle," ib. ; murder of James
King, 165; an editor's story, 168,
169.

White, a term of praise in Utah,
loo.

Wigwam party of the United
States, 199.

Williamsburg, 3.

\Villiamstown (see Victorian Ports).

Wines of Victoria, 343.

Wisconsin (see Norwegian).

Wolverenes cognomen of Michigan
people, 58

Woman, physical degeneration of,

in United States, 38 ; admitted
to University of Kansas, but ex-
cluded from university degrees in
those of Michigan and New
England, 63 ; position and con-
dition of Mormon ladies, 105,
106 ; in Victoria, 339 ; female
suffrage, ib. ; social position of,
bad both in England and Aus-
tralia, ib. ; superiority of, in
Western States of America, 340 ;
a Kansas argument for woman's
rights, il>. ; disproportion of the
sexes in the Australian colonies,
ib. ; the American Sewing Clubi
during the war, 340, 341 ;
woman's place among the British
section of the Teutonic race,
341 ; want of, in young countries,
363 ; Irish workhouse girls sent
to the colonies, 363-365 ; their
bad character and influence, 364,
365 ; efforts to raise position of,
amongst the Parsees, 527.

YAK, suitability for mountainous
regions of United States, 94.

Yorktown, ancient memories (if, 3.

Young, the Mormon chief (set.
Brigham Young).

LONDON I

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11 Greater Britain

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